Toralv Maurstad is a prominent actor of Norwegian stage, screen and television. By many regarded as the leading Norwegian actor of his generation, he is the son of the highly regarded actor Alfred Maurstad and actress Tordis Maurstad, and half-brother of actress Mari Maurstad. Maurstad graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London in 1949. Through the years he has not only worked as a leading actor but is also a respected stage director, and was the head of Oslo Nye Teater from 1967 to 1978 and most notably the head of Norway's National Theatre Nationaltheatret from 1978 to 1986. He is considered perhaps the greatest interpreter of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, having played the part numerous times. His only American film appearance was starring in the 1970 box office and critical disaster Song of Norway, a film musical about the life of composer Edvard Grieg. It was based on a successful, but now semi-forgotten, 1944 Broadway show. A testament to his position in Norwegian theatre came when in the 1970s he co-starred with Liv Ullmann in a critically acclaimed Broadway-staging of Ibsen's A Doll's House in New York. 

November 24th, 1926 in Bærum (Age 97)