British actor Ian Holm, known for gracing the screen in sci-fi classics, legendary fantasy blockbusters, and treading the boards at the RSC, has passed away in London at the age of 88. The news was confirmed by Holm’s agent, who said that the actor “died peacefully in hospital” from a Parkinson’s-related illness.
At the start of his career, Holm was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company when it originated in 1960, going on to play some the Bard’s most legendary roles. On screen, he played A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s Puck for director Peter Hall twice, both in his 1959 TV movie and 1968 film version. Later he would star in Kenneth Branagh’s film of Henry V as Captain Fluellen, and in Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet as Polonius.
Holm was just as at home with genre cinema. In 1979 he memorably played meddling android Ash in Ridley Scott’s Alien, and went on to appear in Time Bandits and Brazil for Terry Gilliam, Naked Lunch and eXistenZ for David Cronenberg, and The Fifth Element for Luc Besson. Later in his career, he received another landmark role – playing Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy. He reprised the role for cameos in the later Hobbit trilogy, playing Bilbo one last time in his final screen appearance in The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies.
Elsewhere, Holm took on a diverse set of roles that spoke to his versatility. He played coach Sam Mussabini in Chariots Of Fire, for which he won a BAFTA and was nominated for an Oscar. For those who grew up on the BBC’s 1992 TV adaptation of The Borrowers he was Pod, while he reunited with Kenneth Branagh for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to play Victor Frankenstein’s father. He took the lead in Atom Egoyan’s hugely acclaimed drama The Sweet Hereafter. Towards the end of his life, he voiced nefarious, moustache-twirling chef Skinner in Pixar’s Ratatouille. He even reprised the role of Alien’s Ash in video game form, appearing in the acclaimed Alien: Isolation in one of his final performances.
Our thoughts are with his friends and family – and we’ll leave you with this fitting moment from The Lord Of The Rings, in which Bilbo Baggins leaves Bag End, and decides on the perfect ending for his book.
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