British actor Julian Sands, who starred in several major films in the late 1980s and 1990s, including ‘Room With A View’ and ‘Farewell Las Vegas’, has been found dead on a mountain in southern Las Vegas. California five months after he was reported missing, authorities said Tuesday.
The investigation confirmed that the remains of a hiker found near Mount Baldy on Sunday were indeed those of the actor, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office said. The cause of his death has not yet been determined, authorities said.
The 65-year-old actor had long been an avid hiker. He had been reported missing on January 13 after launching himself towards the summit of Mount Baldy, which rises to more than 3048 meters east of Los Angeles, where he lived.
Julian Sands, who was born, raised and started acting in England, has always worked in film and television, performing more than 150 roles in his 40-year career. For a decade, from 1985 to 1995, he played major roles in a series of acclaimed films.
He had started his career in films like “Oxford Blues” and “The Tear”. In 1985, he landed the main role in “Room with a View”: it was his character who fell in love with Helena Bonham Carter during her vacation in Tuscany.
Following her success, Sands moved to the United States to pursue a career in Hollywood. He then played the lead role in the 1989 horror fantasy “Warlock” and its sequel. In the 1990 horror comedy “Arachnophobia,” starring Jeff Daniels and John Goodman, he played an entomologist.
The following year, he appeared in Canadian David Cronenberg’s surreal adaptation of “Naked Lunch”, a novel by William Burroughs. In 1995, he played an abusive Latvian pimp alongside Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue in “Adieu Las Vegas”.
After “Leaving Las Vegas”, the quality of the films he starred in and the significance of his roles began to decline. He still worked, though, appearing in Wim Wenders’ “The Million Dollar Hotel” and Dario Argento’s “The Phantom of the Opera.”
He has also appeared as a “guest performer” or in recurring roles on television series, including “24”, “Medici”, “Smallville”, “Dexter”, “Gotham”, and “Elementary”. His last film was “The Ghosts of Monday”, in 2022.
In an interview with the Guardian in 2020, the actor highlighted his all-consuming passion for the outdoors. He claimed then that he was happiest when he was “near the top of a mountain on a glorious cold morning” and that his greatest dream was to climb “a distant peak in the high Himalayas, such as Makalu “.
Julian Sands had three children. He had been married since 1990 to journalist Evgenia Citkowitz.