European thespian Max von Sydow joins The Tudors for Season 3

Showtime announced this week that along with British soul singer Joss Stone, it’s added another top talent for The Tudors third season.

Acclaimed Swedish actor Max von Sydow — best known to U.S. audiences for his roles in The Exorcist, Hannah and Her Sisters and Minority Report — will play Cardinal Von Waldburg, a German-born cleric who tries to orchestrate the downfall of Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ King Henry VIII.

The cardinal, whose family was killed by Protestant revolutionaries, was appointed by the Pope to crush the Reformation in England.

Showtime calls Von Sydow “one of the most iconic European actors of the last century.” The Oscar-, Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated actor worked with director Ingmar Bergman on 13 of his films, most notably The Seventh Seal.

The 79-year-old actor has called acting a “weird profession.” “It’s such a futile thing,” he notes. “Even when it’s there on film, there’s nothing really to it. It is not like making a piece of furniture or writing a book.”

Von Sydow will appear in four of the eight episodes in Season 3, which is filming now in Dublin and premieres in 2009.