Ian Holm

Sir Ian Holm CBE (born 12 September, 1931 as Ian Holm Cuthbert), is an Academy Award-nominated and Tony Award-winning English actor known for his stage work and for many film roles, including the hobbit Bilbo Baggins in the first and third films from The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and Father Vito Cornelius in The Fifth Element.

Background

Holm was born in Goodmayes, Essex, and was educated at Chigwell School and then the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

He has been married four times. In 1991 he married, as his third wife, popular actress Penelope Wilton, and they appeared together in The Borrowers (1993) on British television, although in 2001 they divorced.

He has five children (three daughters and two sons from the first three of his four wives). His eldest daughter, Jessica, never got into the film business. 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 hip Hollywood club owner, while Harry Holm is a filmmaker most notable for his music videos. Melissa Holm is a casting director.

In 1989 Holm was created a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to drama, and in 1998 he was knighted.

He was treated a few years ago for prostate cancer, which currently appears to be in complete remission.

Career

Holm was an established star of the Royal Shakespeare Company before making an impact on television and film.

In 1965, Holm played Richard III in the BBCs serialisation of the Wars of the Roses plays, based on the RSC production of the plays, and gradually made a name for himself with minor roles in films such as Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), Mary, Queen of Scots (1971) and Young Winston (1972).

In 1967, he won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play, for playing the role of Lenny in The Homecoming by Harold Pinter.

His first film role to have a major impact was that of the evil android in Ridley Scott's Alien (1979). His work in Chariots of Fire (1981), earned him a special award at the Cannes Film Festival and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Back home in England, he won a BAFTA award, for Best Supporting Actor, for Chariots.

In the 1980s, he had memorable roles in Greystoke - The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984) and Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985). He played Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland in the Dennis Potter-scripted fantasy Dreamchild (1985).

In 1989 he was nominated for a BAFTA award for the TV series Game, Set, and Match. Based on the novels by Len Deighton this tells the story of an intelligence officer (Holm) who discovers that his own wife in an enemy spy.

He continued to perform Shakespeare, and appeared with Kenneth Branagh in Henry V (1989) and as Polonius to Mel Gibson's Hamlet (1990).

He raised his profile in 1997 with two prominent roles, as the stressed but gentle priest Vito Cornelius in the The Fifth Element and the tormented plaintiff's lawyer in The Sweet Hereafter. In 2001 he starred in From Hell as the physician Sir William Withey Gull. The same year he appeared as Bilbo Baggins in the blockbuster film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, having previously played Bilbo's nephew Frodo Baggins in a 1981 BBC Radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. He reappeared in the trilogy in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), for which he shared a SAG award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.

He 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.

Other asects of his career of note include:

• Holm is a favorite actor of Terry Gilliam, having appeared in Time Bandits and Brazil.

• Holm is also 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 has played Napoleon Bonaparte three times. First, in the 1972 television series Napoleon and Love. Next, in a cameo comic rendition, in Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits from 1981. He completed the set in 2001 playing the fallen and exiled leader in the fanciful film The Emperor's New Clothes

Filmography

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