To fully understand Sjöström's position as one of the leading Swedish film directors at the time when he was moving to Hollywood it is necessary to first take a closer look at his Swedish background, both as actor and director. After this general background, the change in Swedish production strategies during his early years as director will be shortly discussed, which leads on to a more specific description of the particular film style that has been identified with “Sjöström” as an early Swedish auteur. The public debate concerning film cultures, on the specific issue of national versus international, that took place in Sweden as well as in the rest of Europe and in America during the 1910s and 1920s will also be dealt with, as well as the American reception of Sjöström's films from the Swedish years.

Sjöström was born in 1879 to a mother with a background as actress and a father who was a businessman with varying success. He spent part of his childhood in the United States, but returned by himself to Sweden after the death of his mother to attend an Uppsala secondary school in 1893. After the death of his father in 1896, and with the help of his maternal uncle, Victor Hartman, a prominent actor who provided him with a letter of recommendation, Sjöström started his acting career. For 15 years, he worked mostly with a number of touring theatre companies in Sweden and Finland, where he performed in classics by Shakespeare or Strindberg, but he made his most prominent appearances in popular comedies, where he won acclaim both for his good looks and his natural way of acting. By 1911, he was managing the Einar Fröberg repertory company.

In 1912, however, the picture would change. Sjöström received a phone call from an old classmate who had become a journalist and thus come to know people from the film industry. Sjöström later recalled: