Sir Ian Holm, the British actor of stage and screen, passed away at the age of 88, according to reports published Friday. He was a Tony-winner for his work in Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming in 1967 and an Oscar nominee for his supporting role in Chariots of Fire in 1981. That role also won him a BAFTA and a supporting actor award from the Cannes Film Festival. He was also nominated for two Emmy awards. He is likely best known to mainstream audiences for the role of Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies, and as Ash the science officer with a secret in Ridley Scott’s Alien.
The Sussex-born son of a Scottish psychiatrist trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, began his career at the Shakespeare Memorial Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon, then joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at its opening in 1960. He secured strong notices with a memorable 1965 Peter Hall production of Henry V. Playwright Harold Pinter considered him the most reliable actor on the boards at the time (“he puts on my shoe and it fits” he told the New York Times in 2001) and directed him himself in those early days.
His first film and television credits saw him slipping easily into period projects: Nicholas and Alexandra, Young Winston, Napoleon and Love, and the like. (This last one is particularly amusing, as he’d reprise the role of the noted Corsican with a dash of sci fi absurdity for Terry Gilliam in Time Bandits not long thereafter.)
After two films with Richard Lester (Juggernaut and Robin and Marian, in which he played King John) his biggest exposure came in Alien as Ash, the company mole/android embedded aboard the Nostromo as it is sent unawares to LV-426 on a secret, deadly mission to retrieve an untamable killer extra terrestrial. (This movie is over 40 years old, there shall be no spoiler warnings.) In a movie loaded with shocks and gross-outs, Ash’s milky-white decapitation reveal is one of the highlights.
After Alien came his award-winning role in Chariots of Fire, Hugh Hudson’s surprise best picture-winner set at the 1924 Olympics. Holm played running coach Sam Mussabini, who helps train Ben Cross’s Harold Abrahams while he faces anti-Semitic prejudice the University of Cambridge. In his 1981 review Roger Ebert said that Holm “quietly dominates every scene he is in.”
As his career continued he worked with a parade of notable directors, including Gilliam, Kenneth Branagh, Woody Allen, David Cronenberg, Steven Soderbergh, Nicholas Hytner, Danny Boyle, Albert and Allen Hughes, and Martin Scorsese. He hit quite a stride in 1996-97, appearing in Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci’s tear-jerking chef drama Big Night as Tucci and Tony Shalhoub’s foil, and as the priest Vito Cornelius in Luc Besson’s flamboyant sci fi fantasy The Fifth Element. He also won some critics association awards for his role in the morally conflicted lawyer in Atom Egoyan’s Oscar-nominated drama The Sweet Hereafter.
In 1999, however, he achieved a whole new level of success as the perambulating elder Middle Earth statesman Bilbo Baggins in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The kind Hobbit’s returned in The Return of the King and also appeared in the first and third Hobbit films. The final Bilbo appearance from 2014 remains his final screen credit.
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