Julian SandsA versatile British actor whose film roles included poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Louis XIV, a magician, Superman’s father and a Latvian pimp, was presumed dead on Tuesday, missing while hiking alone on a trail on Mount Baldy. More than five months after it happened. San Gabriel Mountains in Southern California. He was 65 years old.
On Sunday, authorities found human remains near the mountain where search teams were looking for Mr Sands. The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said they were contacted by hikers who found human remains in the Mount Baldy Wilderness. Search efforts were complicated by dangerous conditions, including a series of severe storms.
coroner’s office Identified Remnant as Mr. Sands on Tuesday. It added that the cause of his death is being investigated.
Because of his shock of blonde hair and occasionally icy demeanor, Mr. Sands was instantly recognizable. He could easily slip from a costume drama like James Ivory’s “A Room with a View” (1985), in which he played an idealized romantic turn of the 20th century, to a suspense film like “Warlock” (1989). As the title character, he follows a 17th-century witch hunter fleeing to 20th-century Los Angeles.
“He was always nice, always gallant and dignified,” former New York Times film critic Janet Maslin said in a phone interview. “I don’t remember any wrong move on his part.”
Mr. Sands played Shelley in Ken Russell’s horror film “Gothic” (1987), a true storry: a gathering in a Swiss villa on a stormy night in 1816 where Shelley; his future wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, who would soon write “Frankenstein”; her half-sister, Claire Clairmont; Lord Byron; And Byron’s doctor, John William Polidori, wrote ghost stories.
Mr. Sands Shelley suffered from drug-induced hallucinations and was haunted by fears and demons. Gabriel Byrne’s Byron was almost demonic.
Mr Sands told The Times in 1987, “I think these pictures are rooted in reality.” “If people think otherwise, it is because of post-Victorian whitewash. These were not just beautiful romantic poets. They were subversive, anarchic hedonists who followed a particular line of immorality.”
Within two years, Mr. Sands worked with Mr. Ivory and Mr. Russell, two directors with very different styles.
Mr Sands told The Times, “James Ivory is like an Indian miniature artist, and Ken Russell is a graffiti artist.” “James Ivory is like an ornithologist watching his subjects from afar, while Ken Russell is like a big hunter filming among a herd of rhinoceros.”
Mr. Sands also worked with British director Mike Figgis on several films, including “Leaving Las Vegas” (1996), in which he played a pimp, and “The Loss of Sexual Innocence” (1999), in which Mr. Figgis Are. The story of Adam and Eve is intertwined with that of a filmmaker (Mr. Sands) who drifts in and out of his sexual memories.
In his review of “The Loss of Sexual Innocence” in The Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas wrote, “Since this is a film of images rather than words, it requires a great deal of presence and expression on the part of the actors.” “Glad that Figgis has chosen well, Sands effortlessly takes on the most demanding role of a man oozing self-absorption.”
Julian Richard Morley Sands was born in Otley, England, on January 4, 1958, to Richard and Brenda Sands, and grew up in nearby Gargrave. He began acting as a child, inspired in part by his mother’s work in amateur theatre. He told The Yorkshire Post in 2013 that he appeared in a play when he was 6 years old; His first line was “My master, the great Aladdin.”
He studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, but left in 1979 to form a youth theatre, which performed in schools and clubs. His screen career began in the early 1980s with minor roles in films such as “Oxford Blues” and “The Killing Fields”, and “The Sun Also Rises”, a miniseries based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway.
Mr. Sands’ other roles included a photographer in “The Killing Fields” (1985), an entomologist in “Arachnophobia” (1990), Louis XIV in “Vettel” (2000), and Jor-El, Superman’s father in two episodes. television series “Smallville” (in 2009 and 2010), and a sadistic farmer in the Czech film “The Painted Bird” (2019), an adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski’s 1965 novel about a homeless and abused boy during World War II.
“I was attracted to ‘The Painted Bird’ because of its unflinching, candid but ultimately unflinching consideration of human endurance.” Mr. Sands told the website MovieMaker In 2020. “The dark hinterland of war-torn Eastern Europe is as beautiful and moving as it is disturbing and strange.”
Mr. Sands occasionally appeared on stage earned a Drama Desk nomination For his one-man show, “A Celebration of Harold Pinter”, in 2013, Mr. Sands performed the show at Manhattan’s Irish Repertory Theater in 2012 (and again in 2016), directed by John Malkovich and further extended. Houston; Sarasota, Florida; East Lansing, Michigan; and other cities over the course of several years.
The focus was not on Pinter’s plays but on his poetry. Mr. Sands, who had known Pinter since 1987, came to his aid in 2005 when he read the ailing playwright’s poetry in England; They remained close until Pinter’s death three years later.
“I’ve called it the ‘Homeric Evening of the Theatre’ in the past,” Mr. Sands told The Washington Post In 2015, “Because It’s Me, in a Pool of Fire Light, with the audience gathered around the fire to an embarrassing level.”
Mr. Sands’ survivors include his wife, Evgenia Sitkowitz; their daughters, Natalya and Imogen; and his son, Henry. His marriage to Sarah Harvey ended in divorce.
Mr. Sands loved hiking in the Los Angeles area, especially Mount Baldy.
He was quoted in “My City, My Los Angeles: Famous People Share Their Favorite Places” (2013) by Jeryl Brunner as saying, “I’ve been to Mount Baldy about 200 times, so I think it’s really favourite.” , “And I love it in the winter. The winter conditions make it a bit more interesting.