Confirmed the death of British actor Julian Sands after his remains were identified in the mountains of California – News Block

British actor Julian Sands, who starred in several Oscar-nominated films in the late 1980s and 1990s, including a room with a view and leaving vegaswas found dead on a southern California mountain five months after he went missing while hiking, authorities said Tuesday.

An investigation confirmed it was Sands whose remains hikers found Sunday in a desert near Mount Baldy, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said. The 65-year-old actor was a longtime avid hiker who lived in Los Angeles and was reported missing on January 13 after heading to the peak, which rises more than 10,000 feet east of the city.

Teams aided by drones and helicopters had searched for Sands several times, but were severely hampered by wintry conditions that lasted into spring. There was no sign of Sands until hikers found her remains.

It has not yet been determined how he died, authorities said.

40 year career

Sands, who was born, raised and began acting in England, has worked steadily in film and television, amassing more than 150 credits in a 40-year career. Over a 10-year period, from 1985 to 1995, he played leading roles in a series of acclaimed films.

After studying at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, Sands embarked on a career in theater and film, playing small roles in films including oxford blues and the fields of death. He landed the lead role of George Emerson, who falls in love with Helena Bonham Carter’s Lucy Honeychurch while vacationing in Tuscany, in the 1985 British romance. A room with a view.

The film from director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award for Best Picture and was nominated for eight Oscars, winning three.

In the wake of her success, Sands moved to the United States to pursue a career in Hollywood.

He played the title role in the 1989 horror fantasy. Sorcerer and its sequel. In the 1990 horror comedy arachnophobiaWith Jeff Daniels and John Goodman, Sands played a spider entomologist.

The following year, he appeared in Canadian director David Cronenberg’s surreal adaptation of the William Burroughs novel. naked lunch In 1991.

In 1993, Sands starred in the thriller helena boxing, a film that garnered mainstream media attention during production when Madonna and Kim Basinger accepted the lead role before dropping out. The part went to twin peaks actress Sherilyn Fenn. The movie flopped.

Author Anne Rice pitched Sands to play the titular Lestat in the highly publicized 1994 Hollywood adaptation of her novel. Interview with the Vampirebut the role went to Tom Cruise.

in 1995 leaving vegas, Sands played an abusive Latvian pimp alongside Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue. The film was nominated for four Oscars, with Cage winning Best Actor.

After leaving vegas, the quality of the films Sands was in and the size of her roles began to decline. He worked constantly, appearing in the film by director Wim Wenders. The million dollar hotel and the director Dario Argento The Phantom of the Opera.

He has also appeared as a guest star or in recurring roles on television series, including 24, Medici, smallville, Right handed, Gotham city and Elementary. His last film was 2022. the ghosts of monday.

‘Lover of the natural world’

Sands was born in Yorkshire, the middle child of five siblings raised by a single mother. He had three children of his own.

He had been married since 1990 to journalist Evgenia Citkowitz, with whom he had two adult daughters, Imogen Morley Sands and Natalya Morley Sands. His eldest child was Henry Sands, whom he had with his first wife, the journalist Sarah Harvey.

Sands touted his love of the outdoors in a 2020 interview with The Guardian, saying he was happiest when he was “near the top of a mountain on a glorious cold morning” and that his biggest dream was to climb “a remote peak in the high Himalayas, like Makalu”.

The actor said in the interview that in the early 1990s, he was caught in a “heinous” storm in the Andes and was lucky to survive when three others near his group did not.

A few days before he was found, the Sands family released a statement saying: “We continue to hold Julian in our hearts with fond memories of him as a wonderful father, husband, explorer, lover of the natural world and the arts, and as an original and collaborative performer”.