Nils Anton Alfhild Asther (17 January 1897 – 19 October 1981)[1] was a Swedish actor active in Hollywood from 1926 to the mid-1950s, known as "the male Greta Garbo".

Although Asther had promised Åkerlund marriage, she however was unwed when she gave birth to Nils in Sankt Matthæus parish in the Copenhagen borough of Vesterbro where she stayed very briefly.

)[citation needed] He spent his first year as a foster child in Hyllie, Sweden with saddlemaker Rasmus Hellström and wife Emilia Kristina Möller.

[citation needed] His half-brother Gunnar Anton Asther (born March 4, 1892, in Caroli, Malmö) was his father's child from a previous marriage to Anna Paulina Olander, who died in July 1895.

[citation needed] As a young man Asther moved to Stockholm, where he received acting lessons from Augusta Lindberg.

By 1928 his good looks had made him into a leading man, playing opposite such stars as Pola Negri, Marion Davies and Joan Crawford.

One of his most popular films was Our Dancing Daughters, starring Joan Crawford, Johnny Mack Brown, Anita Page, and Dorothy Sebastian.

[5] The theatrical community and the film industry in the 1920s accepted gay actors with little reservation, always provided they remained discreet about their sexual orientation and there was no public suggestion of impropriety.

[9] They had one child, Evelyn Asther Duncan, nicknamed in the media as "the international Baby" due to her Swedish father, American mother, and Bavarian birth.

[11] The book was put together with a foreword by theatre historian Uno "Myggan" Ericson, who had met Asther only once, when he arrived in Gothenburg in 1958.

Iwo Wiklander claimed in later interviews that Nils Asther was intent on erasing parts of his life before his death, and that much material in his autobiography was exaggerated – or completely made up – to make a more interesting story.