The son of a stern Lutheran pastor who eventually became chaplain to Sweden's royal family, Ingmar Bergman was raised under strict discipline, on occasion spending hours in a dark closet for infractions of his father's rigid ethical code. The traumatic experiences of his childhood were later to play a significant role in his work as a stage and film director. He fell in love with the theatre at the age of five, after seeing his first play, and at the age of nine conjured up a toy theatre under a table in his playroom. He became involved in stage production, as an actor and director, at the University of Stockholm, where he studied literature and art, and after graduation he became a trainee-director at a Stockholm theatre. During that period he wrote a number of plays, novels, and short stories, most of which he failed to have produced or published. He entered the Swedish film industry in 1941 as a script doctor.