Actor Julian Sands, who starred in several Oscar-nominated films in the late 1980s and ’90s including “A Room With a View” and “Leaving Las Vegas,” was found dead on a Southern California mountain five months after he disappeared while hiking, authorities said Tuesday.
An investigation confirmed that it was Sands whose remains hikers found Saturday in wilderness near Mount Baldy, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said. The 65-year-old actor was an avid and experienced hiker who lived in Los Angeles and was reported missing Jan. 13 after setting out on the peak that rises more than 10,000 feet east of the city. Crews aided by drones and helicopters had searched for him several times, but, severely hampered by wintry conditions that lasted through spring, no sign of him was found until the civilian hikers came upon him.
Born in Otley, Yorkshire, and educated at Lord Wandsworth College in Hampshire, Sands started his acting career with roles in such films as the The Killing Fields.That brought him to the attention of director James Ivory, who cast him, ahead of the likes of Rupert Everett, in the 1985 film adaptation of EM Forster's novel A Room With A View.Set in Edwardian-era England and Italy, the film centred around Helena Bonham Carter's character Lucy Honeychurch and her ever-growing love for Sands' free-spirited George Emerson.The film, which also featured Dame Maggie Smith, Daniel Day-Lewis and Dame Judi Dench, was a box office hit and won Oscar, Bafta and Golden Globe awards. The British Film Institute has named it one of its top 100 British films.Later, Sands played the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in Ken Russell's psychological thriller Gothic, before moving to Hollywood.He played the title role in the 1989 horror film Warlock and its sequel, and his other big screen credits included prominent parts in Arachnophobia, Boxing Helena and Leaving Las Vegas, as well as starring opposite Jackie Chan in the action-comedy film The Medallion in 2003.His TV roles included a Russian terrorist in Kiefer Sutherland's TV drama 24 in 2006, and Superman's biological father Jor-El in Smallville in 2009.