Best Known As: Bilbo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings movies
On stage since the 1950s, England's Sir Ian Holm built on his solid career as a Shakespearean actor with diverse movie roles that included The Sweet Hereafter (1997) and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). Holm is a versatile actor who was an intense leading man in his younger days, getting raves for his performances in British stage productions and winning a Tony for his role in the 1967 Broadway version of The Homecoming. He famously had a bout of stage fright in 1976 while performing The Iceman Cometh and stayed absent from the stage until 1993 (excepting one performance in 1979). Fortunately, Holm had plenty of work in television and the movies. He gained international celebrity in the 1980s, thanks to his turn as a sneaky android in Alien (1979, starring Sigourney Weaver) and his Oscar-nominated role as a running coach in Chariots of Fire (1981). Lacking the height of the average Hollywood leading man, Holm has often played supporting roles in the movies, with the notable exception of The Sweet Hereafter (1997, based on the novel by Russell Banks). His memorable movies include the Terry Gilliam films Time Bandits (1981) and Brazil (1985); the 1989 version of Henry V and the 1990 version of Hamlet; the BBC productions of The Borrowers (1992 and 1993); the Stanley Tucci film Big Night (1996, with Tony Shalhoub); the Bruce Willis sci-fi thriller The Fifth Element (1997, with Milla Jovovich); and the Peter Jackson versions of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings (2001) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003). For his contributions to the theater he was knighted in 1998.
Popularly known as "Mr. Ubiquitous" thanks to his versatility as a stage and screen actor, Ian Holm is one of Britain's most acclaimed -- to say nothing of steadily employed -- performers. Although the foundations of his career were built on the stage, he has become an increasingly popular onscreen presence in his later years. Holm earned particular plaudits for his work in Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter (1997), in which he played an emotionally broken lawyer who comes to a small town that has been devastated by a recent school bus crash.
Born on September 12, 1931, Holm came into the world in a Goodmayes, Ilford, mental asylum, where his father resided as a psychiatrist and superintendent. When he wasn't tending to the insane, Holm's father took him to the theatre, where he was first inspired, at the age of seven, by a production of Les Miserables starring Charles Laughton. The inspiration carried him through his adolescence -- which, by his account, was not a happy one -- and in 1950, Holm enrolled at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Coincidentally, while a student at RADA, he ended up acting with none other than Laughton himself.
Following a year of national service, Holm joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, making his stage debut as a sword carrier in Othello. In 1956, after two years with the RSC, he debuted on the London stage in a West End production of Love Affair; that same year, he toured Europe with Laurence Olivier's production of Titus Andronicus. Holm subsequently returned to the RSC, where he stayed for the next ten years, winning a number of awards. Among the honors he received were two Evening Standard Actor of the Year Awards for his work in Henry V and The Homecoming; in 1967, he won a Tony Award for his performance in the Broadway production The Homecoming.
The diminutive actor (standing 5'6") made his film debut as Puck in Peter Hall's 1968 adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream, a production that Holm himself characterized as "a total disaster." Less disastrous was that same year's The Bofors Gun, a military drama that earned Holm a Best Supporting Actor BAFTA. He went on to appear in a steady stream of British films and television series throughout the '70s, doing memorable work in films ranging from Mary, Queen of Scots (1971) to Alien (1978), the latter of which saw him achieving a measure of celluloid immortality as Ash, the treacherous android. Holm's TV work during the decade included a 1973 production of The Homecoming and a 1978 production of Les Miserables, made a full 40 years after he first saw it staged with Charles Laughton.
Holm began the '80s surrounded by a halo of acclaim garnered for his supporting role as Harold Abrahams' coach in Chariots of Fire (1981). Nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, he won both a BAFTA and Cannes Festival Award in the same category for his performance. Not content to rest on his laurels, he played Napoleon in Terry Gilliam's surreal Time Bandits that same year; he and Gilliam again collaborated on the 1985 future dystopia masterpiece Brazil. Also in 1985, Holm turned in one of his greatest -- and most overlooked -- performances of the decade as Desmond Cussen, Ruth Ellis' steadfast, unrequited admirer in Dance with a Stranger. He also continued to bring his interpretations of the Bard to the screen, providing Kenneth Branagh's Henry V (1989) with a very sympathetic Fluellen and Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet (1990) with a resolutely meddlesome Polonius.
The following decade brought with it further acclaim for Holm on both the stage and screen. On the stage -- from which he had been absent since 1976, when he suffered a bout of stage fright -- he won a number of honors, including the 1998 Olivier Award for Best Actor for his eponymous performance in King Lear; he also earned Evening Standard and Critics Circle Awards for his work in the play, as well as an Emmy nomination for its television adaptation. On the screen, Holm was shown to great effect in The Madness of King George (1994), which cast him as the king's unorthodox physician, Atom Egoyan's aforementioned The Sweet Hereafter (1997), and Joe Gould's Secret (1999), in which he starred in the title role of a Greenwich Village eccentric with a surprising secret. In 2000, Holm took on a role of an entirely different sort when he starred as Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson's long awaited adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Holm, who was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1989, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1998 for his "services to drama."
After the final installment in the Lord of the Rings trilogy was released in 2003, Holm took a role in completely different kind of film. 2004's Garden State was a far cry from the epic, big-budget fantasy he'd just starred in and rather, was a quiet, independent film written, directed, produced by and starring the young Zach Braff. Holm's portrayal of the flawed but well-meaning father a confused adult son was a great success, and he went on to play equally complex and enjoyable supporting roles in a variety of films over the next year, from the Strangers with Candy movie to Lord of War.
In 2006, Holm signed on to lend his voice to the casts of two animated films: the innovative sci-fi noir, Renaissance, and the family feature Ratatouille--slated for release in 2006 and 2007 respectively. He also joined the cast of the controversial drama O Jerusalem, a movie about a friendship between a Jewish and Arab man during the creation of the state of Israel.
Holm was born Ian Holm Cuthbert in Goodmayes, then in Essex (now in London), to Scottish parents, Jean Wilson (née Holm) and James Harvey Cuthbert.[1] His mother was a nurse, and his father was a psychiatrist who worked as the superintendent of the West Ham Corporation Mental Hospital and was one of the pioneers of electric shock therapy.[2][3][4][5] He had an older brother, Eric, who died in 1943. Holm was educated at the independent Chigwell School in Essex. His parents retired to Mortehoe, Devon and then Worthing where he joined an amateur dramatic society.[6] A visit to the dentist led to an introduction to Henry Baynton, a well-known provincial Shakespearean actor who helped Holm train for admission to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he secured a place in 1949. His studies there were interrupted a year later when he was called up for National Service in the British Army, during which he was posted to Klagenfurt in Austria and attained the rank of Lance Corporal. They were then interrupted a second time when he volunteered to go on an acting tour of the United States in 1952.[6] He finally graduated from RADA in 1953; whilst there he had been offered 'spear-carrying' roles at Stratford and he stayed there for 13 years, soon graduating to more significant roles and abandoning plans to move on after Peter Hall founded the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1960.[6]
Holm has been nominated for an Emmy Award twice, for a PBS broadcast of a National Theatre production of King Lear, in 1999; and for a supporting role in the HBO film The Last of the Blonde Bombshells opposite Judi Dench, in 2001. Holm has provided voice-overs for many British TV documentaries and commercials.
Holm is a favorite actor of Terry Gilliam, having appeared in Time Bandits and Brazil. Holm has also appeared in two David Cronenberg films, Naked Lunch (1991) and eXistenZ (1999) and was Harold Pinter's favourite actor, the playwright once stating: "He puts on my shoe, and it fits!" Holm made a stir as Lenny in the first ever performance of Pinter's masterpiece The Homecoming.
He was made a CBE in 1990 and a Knight Bachelor in 1998 for Services to Drama.
Personal life
Holm has been married four times.[7] His first three marriages ended in divorce. In 1991, he married his third wife, actress Penelope Wilton, in Wiltshire.[8] They appeared together in The Borrowers (1993) on British television. They divorced in 2001.[7] He is currently married to artist Sophie de Stempel, a protégée and life model of Lucian Freud.[9]
Holm has five children; three daughters and two sons from three women, including the first two of his four wives.[7] His eldest two are from his first marriage, two are by Bee Gilbert, and the youngest is from his second marriage. In chronological order: His eldest daughter, Jessica, is presenter of the Crufts Dog Show; Sarah-Jane Holm played Jenny Rodenhurst Simcock in A Bit of a Do. Barnaby Holm acted as a child but now lives in Los Angeles as a Hollywood club owner, Melissa Holm is a casting director. Harry Holm is a filmmaker most notable for his music videos, and is engaged to Samantha Morton.
He was treated for prostate cancer in 2001; the disease currently appears to be in complete remission.[7]
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