British actor Julian Sands confirmed dead, months after vanishing in
California mountains
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[June 28, 2023]
By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -British-born actor Julian Sands, best known for
his role in the Oscar-celebrated film "A Room with a View," was
confirmed dead on Tuesday, five months after he went missing while out
for a hike in snow-covered mountains of Southern California. He was 65.
Mostly skeletal human remains discovered by hikers on June 25, in the
vicinity where Sands had vanished, were positively identified by the San
Bernardino County coroner as belonging to the actor, the county
sheriff's department said.
The manner of his death remained under investigation, awaiting further
test results, the department said in an statement.
Sands, an avid outdoorsman and mountaineer, was reported missing on Jan.
13, after he had gone hiking alone earlier in the day in the Baldy Bowl
area of the San Gabriel Mountains, about 50 miles (80 km) northeast of
Los Angeles.
The large, slopping area below the crest of Mount Baldy is a popular
destination for skiers, climbers and backpackers. But authorities warned
then that heavy snow from weeks of winter storms had made the area
treacherous for outdoor recreation. Overnight temperatures were dipping
into the mid-20s Fahrenheit (4 to minus 4 Celsius) that week.
A search party organized at the time was pulled out 24 hours later due
to avalanche risks and poor trail conditions. Several subsequent
searches came up empty-handed, including a major sweep conducted days
before Sands' remains were ultimately found in the Mount Baldy
wilderness area, according to the sheriff's department.
Cellphone signals detected on Sunday, Jan. 15, had showed Sands headed
toward the ridge of Mount Baldy, apparently the last indication he was
still on the move, the sheriff's department reported then.
A statement from Sands' family posted by the sheriff's department on
June 21, after the agency's latest search but before his remains were
found, thanked search teams for their efforts and sounded a note of
resignation about his fate.
"We continue to hold Julian in our hearts with bright memories of him as
a wonderful father, husband, explorer, love of the natural world and the
arts, and as an original and collaborative performer," the statement
said.
Sands, in a 2020 interview with the Guardian newspaper, described
himself as happiest when he was "close to a mountain summit on a
glorious cold morning." He also recalled a brush with death during a
climb in the Andes in the early 1990s when he became caught in a storm
above 20,000 feet (6,000 meters) with three others.
"We were all in a very bad way," he recounted. "Some guys close to us
perished. We were lucky."
ROMANCE AND HORROR
Born in England as the third of five boys and educated at Lord
Wandsworth College in Hampshire, Sands began his career with supporting
roles in such films as "Oxford Blues," appearing as the romantic rival
of Rob Lowe's lead character, and "The Killing Fields," playing a young
war correspondent in Cambodia.
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Actor Julian Sands attends the GREAT
British film reception honoring the British nominees of the 87th
Annual Academy Awards at The London West Hollywood in West
Hollywood, California February 20, 2015. REUTERS/Jonathan
Alcorn/File Photo
Sands moved to California in the
1980s after the success of "A Room with a View," an Edwardian-period
romance in which he was cast as the leading man opposite Helena
Bonham Carter.
Based on E.M. Forster's 1908 novel of the same title and set in
England and Italy, the 1985 film was nominated for eight Academy
Awards, including best picture. It won Oscars for best adapted
screenplay, art direction and costume design.
Developing a knack for the horror genre, Sands also starred as a son
of Satan in the 1989 supernatural thriller "Warlock" and its sequel
"Warlock: The Armageddon." He played a spider expert in the 1990
comedy-creeper "Arachnophobia," a twisted, obsessed surgeon in
1993's "Boxing Helena" and the title role in the 1998 film version
of "The Phantom of the Opera."
Other movies included "Leaving Las Vegas," "Naked Lunch" and the
English-language remake of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." He
also appeared in more than two dozen television shows, among them "Smallville"
as Superman's biological dad Jor-El.
In recent years, Sands found success appearing in one-man stage
shows reciting the poetry of Harold Pinter, John Keats and Percy
Shelley, the latter of which he played in the 1986 psychological
thriller "Gothic."
Although never Oscar-nominated himself, Sands dated Jodie Foster and
was her escort to the Academy Awards in 1989 the night she won her
first best-actress statuette for "The Accused." The two co-starred
in the little-seen 1987 indie film "Siesta."
But the outdoors, and mountain climbing in particular, remained a
lifelong obsession.
As quoted in a 2020 interview with Thrive Global, a company founded
by Arianna Huffington, Sands said climbing was not about ego or a
"great heroic sprint for the summit" but rather "about supplication
and sacrifice and humility."
"It’s not so much a celebration of oneself but the eradication of
one’s self consciousness. And so on these walks you lose yourself,
you become a vessel of energy in harmony hopefully with your
environment."
He is survived by his second wife, Evgenia Citkowitz, a journalist,
with whom he had two daughters. He also had a son by his first wife,
journalist Sarah Harvey.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by
Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Tim Ahmann, Diane Craft and
Lisa Shumaker)
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