June 20,2020: Ian Holm, a versatile British actor whose long career included roles in Chariots of Fire and The Lord of the Rings has died. He was 88.
Holm died peacefully on June 19 morning in a hospital, surrounded by his family and carer, his agent Alex Irwin said in a statement. His illness was Parkinson’s-related.
“His sparkling wit always accompanied a mischievous twinkle in his eye,” Irwin said.
“Charming, kind and ferociously talented, we will miss him hugely.”
Holm appeared in scores of movies big and small, from costume dramas to fantasy epics. A generation of moviegoers knows him as Bilbo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies.
He won a British Academy Film Award and gained a supporting-actor Oscar nomination for portraying pioneering athletics coach Sam Mussabini in the hit 1982 film Chariots of Fire.
His other movie roles included Father Cornelius in The Fifth Element, android Ash in Alien, a smooth-talking lawyer in The Sweet Hereafter, Napoleon Bonaparte in Time Bandits, writer Lewis Carroll in Dreamchild and a royal physician in The Madness of King George.
He was also a charismatic theatrr actor who won a Tony Award for best featured actor as Lenny in Harold Pinter’s play The Homecoming in 1967.
He was a longtime member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, though a bout of debilitating stage fright that struck during a production of The Iceman Cometh in 1976 kept him off the stage for many years.
