IAN HOLM

(12 September 1931 - 19 June 2020)

The British actor Ian Holm, who has died from Parkinson’s disease at the age of 88, was successful in every realm of the acting profession. Over the space of sixty-five years he carved out a career that saw him winning Olivier, Bafta and Tony Awards and gaining Academy and Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Born Ian Holm Cuthbert in Essex to Scots parents, Ian Holm was interested in the theatre from the age of seven, eventually training at Rada before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company. He also worked in many London theatres including the National. Ian Holm’s first film was an uncredited role in Girls at Sea (1958). Ten years later he won a Bafta for Jack Gold’s The Bofors Gun. Then came The Fixer with Alan Bates and Peter Hall filmed the RSC’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Holm as Puck. Following these were Oh! What a  Lovely War, A Severed Head and a trio of historical subjects, Nicholas and Alexandra, Mary, Queen of Scots and Young Winston. The film of Pinter’s The Homecoming had Holm repeating his Tony Award-winning performance as Lenny. He was King John in Robin and Marian, opposite Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn and his cv of over sixty films found him in Ridley Scott’s Alien in which he was the resident android, Ash. He was nominated but did not win an Academy Award for Chariots of Fire. However, he did win a Bafta for the best supporting role and a similar award at the Cannes Film Festival. Holm was Napoleon in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits and was also in Gilliam’s Brazil. Latterly he played Bilbo Baggins in two of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy and returned as Old Bilbo in two of Jackson’s Hobbit movies.

Coupled with his stage and film career, Ian Holm was prominent on television, often in films of Shakespeare and Chekhov classics, as well as historical period series such as Napoleon and Love, Jesus of Nazareth and The Lost Boys (as J.M. Barrie). The Borrowers saw him as Pod with his then wife Penelope Wilton. He received umpteen awards for his work on stage and in films plus national honours such as the CBE in 1989 and he was knighted in 1998 for his services to drama. Ian Holm was married four times, firstly to Lynn Mary Stuart in 1955, then Sophie Baker in 1982, Penelope Wilton in 1991 and at the time of his death to the artist Sophie de Stempel. He has two daughters, Jessica and Sarah-Jane, from his first marriage, a son, Harry, from his second, and a daughter, Melissa, and a son, Barnaby, from his relationship with the photographer Bee Gilbert.

MICHAEL DARVELL