Julian Sands died while hiking on the mountain in California
LOS ANGELES –
Actor Julian Sands, who starred in several Oscar-nominated films in the late 1980s and 1990s, including “A Room With a View” and “Leaving Las Vegas,” was found dead on a mountain in South Africa five months after he disappeared while hiking. -California. said Tuesday.
An investigation confirmed it was Sands whose remains hikers found Sunday in the wilderness near Mount Baldy, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said. A longtime avid hiker living in Los Angeles, the 65-year-old actor was reported missing on Jan. 13 after taking off at the peak that rises more than 1,000 feet east of the city. Crews, aided by drones and helicopters, had searched for him several times, but, severely hampered by wintry conditions that persisted throughout the spring, no sign of him was found until the walkers encountered him.
It has not yet been determined how he died, authorities said.
Born, raised and started acting in England, Sands worked constantly in film and television, accumulating over 150 credits in a 40-year career. Over a period of 10 years from 1985 to 1995, he played leading roles in a series of critically acclaimed films.
After studying at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, Sands embarked on a career in stage and film, appearing in small roles in films such as ‘Oxford Blues’ and ‘The Killing Fields’. He landed the lead role of George Emerson, who falls in love with Helena Bonham Carter’s Lucy Honeychurch while on vacation 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 its success, Sands moved to the United States to pursue a career in Hollywood.
He played the title role in the 1989 horror fantasy “Warlock” and its sequel. In the 1990 horror comedy “Arachnophobia,” starring Jeff Daniels and John Goodman, Sands played an entomologist who specializes in spiders.
The following year, he appeared in director David Cronenberg’s surreal adaptation of the William Burroughs novel “Naked Lunch” in 1991.
In 1993, Sands starred in the thriller “Boxing Helena”, a movie that attracted a lot of media attention during production when Madonna and Kim Basinger each accepted the title role before pulling out. The role would go to “Twin Peaks” actor Sherilyn Fenn. The movie flopped.
Author Anne Rice defended Sands to play the titular Lestat in the much-hyped 1994 Hollywood adaptation of her novel “Interview With the Vampire,” but the role would go to Tom Cruise.
In 1995’s “Leaving Las Vegas,” Sands played an abusive Latvian pimp alongside Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue. The film was nominated for four Oscars, of which Cage won the Best Actor award.
Sands praised his love of the outdoors in a 2020 interview with The Guardian, saying he was happiest when he was “close to a mountaintop on a gloriously cold morning” and that his biggest dream was to see “a remote peak in climb the high Himalayas like Makalu.”
The actor said in the interview that he was caught in a “horrific” storm in the Andes in the early 1990s and was lucky enough to survive when three others close to his party did not.
After “Leaving Las Vegas,” the quality of the films Sands was cast in, and the scope of his roles, began to decline. He worked steadily and appeared in “The Million Dollar Hotel” by director Wim Wenders and “The Phantom of the Opera” by director Dario Argento.
He also appeared as a guest star or in recurring roles in TV series including ’24’, ‘Medici’, ‘Smallville’, ‘Dexter’, ‘Gotham’ and ‘Elementary’. His last movie was 2022’s “The Ghosts of Monday”.
Sands was born in Yorkshire, the middle child of five brothers raised by a single mother. He had three children of his own.
He had been married to journalist Evgenia Citkowitz since 1990, with whom he had two adult daughters, Imogen Morley Sands and Natalya Morley Sands. His eldest child was son Henry Sands, whom he had with his first wife, journalist Sarah Harvey.
A few days before he was found, 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 artist.”
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Follow AP Entertainment writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton
