Raised by a single mother, she grew up in a poor home at Fleminggatan in Stockholm, where she was encouraged by the owner of a small shop for sewing materials to pursue her acting dreams.
In 1905, she was accepted to accompany the Anna Lundberg travelling theatre company around Sweden, leading to small roles at theatres in Helsinki and Stockholm.
By 1910, she became a student of the famous song teacher Raymond von zur Mühlen in London, and during the years preceding and during World War I, her fame grew, with her securing major roles in operettas by Emmerich Kálmán and Franz Lehár.
Until the mid-1920s, she was the queen of the operettas, performing in Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Oslo, but eventually, she grew tired of the genre and sought more dramatic roles.
However, finding work was not easy, and she spent a significant amount of time in England, performing for smaller audiences, using her singing and guitar-playing skills.
Her dramatic breakthrough did not come until 1937, when she met director Per Lindberg, who gave her the opportunity to tour Sweden with Bertolt Brecht's The Three-penny-opera.
When Bertolt Brecht escaped from The Third Reich and moved to Sweden, he wrote Mother Courage specifically for her, and in 1948, she starred in 'Me and My Gal' with Nils Poppe at Södra Teatern in Stockholm.
During the 1950s, she was employed by Malmö Stadsteater, working alongside Ingmar Bergman, who also gave her minor but notable roles in his films, including the role of the old Mrs. Armfelt in Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) and Granny Vogler in The Magician (1958).
