Actor Julian Sands, who starred in several Oscar-nominated films including A Room With a View and Leaving Las Vegas, was found dead on a Southern California mountain five months after he went missing while hiking, authorities said Tuesday (local time).
An investigation confirmed that it was Sands whose remains were found Sunday in the desert near Mount Baldy, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.
The 65-year-old actor was a long-time hiker who lived in Los Angeles and was reported missing on January 13 after taking off more than 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) east of the city.
Crews with the help of drones and helicopters searched for him several times, but, severely hampered by the cold weather, no sign of him was found until the searchers reached him.
It is not yet known how he died, authorities said.
Sands, who was born, raised and started acting in England, scored more than 150 credits in a 40-year career.
For 10 years from 1985 to 1995, he played major roles in popular movies.
After studying at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, Sands began a career in stage and film, playing small roles in films including Oxford Blues and The Killing Fields.
Arthur Mola/AP
The British actor went missing in January in Southern California.
He took on the role of George Emerson, who falls in love with Helena Bonham Carter’s Lucy Honeychurch while on holiday 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 film, and was nominated for eight Oscars, winning three.
After his success, Sands moved to the US to work in Hollywood.
He played the title role in the 1989 fantasy film Warlock and its sequel. In the 1990 comedy Arachnophobia, starring Jeff Daniels and John Goodman, Sands played an expert on spiders.
The following year he appeared in director David Cronenberg’s adaptation of William Burroughs’ novel Naked Lunch in 1991.
In 1993, Sands starred in the thriller Boxing Helena, a movie that attracted media attention during production when Madonna and Kim Basinger accepted the role before leaving.
That part goes to Twin Peaks actress Sherilyn Fenn. The video exploded.
Author Anne Rice beat Sands to play Lestat in the 1994 Hollywood adaptation of her novel Vampire Diaries, but the role went to Tom Cruise.
In 1995’s Leaving Las Vegas, Sands played a ruthless Latvian pimp alongside Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue. The film was nominated for four Oscars, with Cage winning best actor.
Sands expressed his love for the outdoors in an interview with the Guardian in 2020, saying that he was happiest when, “close to a mountain peak on a cold morning” and that his biggest dream was growing up, “a distant peak in the Himalayas, like Makalu”.
The actor said in an interview that in the early 1990s, he was caught in a “terrible” typhoon in the Andes and was lucky to survive while three others near his party did not.
After leaving Las Vegas, the quality of Sands’ films was cast, and the size of his roles began to decrease. He worked steadily, appearing in director Wim Wenders’ The Million Dollar Hotel and director Dario Argento’s The Phantom of the Opera.
He has also appeared as a guest star or in recurring episodes on television including 24, Medici, Smallville, Dexter, Gotham and Elementary.
His last film was 2022’s The Ghosts of Monday.
Sands was born in Yorkshire, the middle child of five children raised by a single mother. He had three children of his own.
He was married since 1990 to journalist Evgenia Citkowitz, with whom he had two grown-up daughters, Imogen Morley Sands and Natalya Morley Sands.
His eldest child was a son Henry Sands, who he had with his first wife, journalist Sarah Harvey.
Days before he was found, the Sands family said, “We continue to hold Julian in our hearts and fond memories of him as a wonderful father, husband, explorer, nature and art lover, and original musician and collaborator”.
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