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Biography for
Sir Ian Holm
Birth name
Ian Holm Cuthbert
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Height
5' 6" (1.68 m)
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Sophie de Stempel (December 2003 - present)
Penelope Wilton (1991 - 2001) (divorced)
Sophie Baker (1982 - 1986) (divorced) 1 child
Lynn Mary Shaw (1955 - 1965) (divorced) 2 children--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Personal quotes
On his Hobbit feet in the "Lord of the Rings" films: "These things are like boats with toes.""While shooting in Mexico, all conversation was dominated by bowels. During filming, if you'll pardon the expression, you're frightened to fart."
"I've always been a minimalist. It was Bogart who once said, 'If you think the right thoughts, the camera will pick it up'. The most important thing in the face is the eyes, and if you can make the eyes talk, you're halfway there."
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."
Trivia
Father of Barnaby Holm.Children - with Lynn Mary Shaw: daughters Jessica and Sarah-Jane; with Sophie Baker: son Harry; also had son Barnaby Holm and daughter Melissa with professional photographer Bee Gilbert, with whom Holm had a relationship after his first marriage (1965-1976) but never married.
Appointed a CBE in 1990; Knighted in June 1998.
Developed a severe case of stage fright in 1976 while performing The Iceman Cometh and left the theatre. He has only returned three times since then.
Clearly has no objections to being buried up to his neck in the pursuit of his craft, as this has happened to him in no less than three films: Alien (1979), Brazil (1985) and Simon Magus (1999/I).
He was awarded the 1998 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Actor of the 1997 season for his performance in "King Lear" at the Royal National Theatre: Cottesloe stage.
He was awarded the 1993 London Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actor for his performance in "Moonlight."
He was awarded the 1997 London Critics Circle Theatre Award (Drama) for Best Actor for his performance in King Lear at the Royal National Theatre.
He was awarded the 1993 London Critics Circle Theatre Award (Drama Theatre Award) for Best Actor in "Moonlight." His wife, Penelope Wilton, was awarded Best Actress for "The Deep Blue Sea" at the same awards ceremony.
He was awarded the 1997 London Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actor for his performance in "King Lear."
Has two roles in common with Orson Bean. Bean was the voice of Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit (1977) (TV), while Holm played in the Peter Jackson trilogy. Bean also played Frodo in The Return of the King (1980) (TV); Holm played Frodo on BBC radio.
An Associate Member of RADA.
Children: Jessica, Sarah-Jane, Barnaby, Melissa, Harry.
Has played Napoleon Bonaparte three times in "Napoleon and Love" (1972) (mini), Time Bandits (1981) and The Emperor's New Clothes (2001) - and was a front-runner for the part in Stanley Kubrick's unproduced biopic.
Won Broadway's 1967 Tony Award as Best Supporting or Featured Actor (Dramatic) for Harold Pinter's "The Homecoming," a role he recreated in the film version with the same title, The Homecoming (1973).
Played a meteorologist in Day After Tomorrow (2002) (as Professor Terry Rapson) and The Aviator (2004) (as Professor Fitz), both released in 2004.
Though he has only appeared in two production of The Lord of the Rings, he has worked with three Aragorns. He appeared with Viggo Mortensen in the Lord of the Rings films, Robert Stephens in the radio adaptation, and worked with John Hurt in Alien (1979). Mortensen and Hurt were also both last-minute replacements for other actors.
Filmography
• Alien Vs. Predator/Alien (2005)
• Alice Through the Looking Glass (2004)
• The Aviator (2004)
• The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
• Garden State (2004)
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
• Prisoner of Paradise (2003)
• The Emperor's New Clothes (2002)
• From Hell (2001)
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
• Beautiful Joe (2000)
• Bless the Child (2000)
• Esther Kahn (2000)
• Joe Gould's Secret (2000)
• Last of the Blonde Bombshells (2000)
• The Match (2000)
• Simon Magus (2000)
• Animal Farm (1999)
• Shergar (1999)
• eXistenZ (1999)
• Incognito (1998)
• The Fifth Element (1997)
• A Life Less Ordinary (1997)
• The Sweet Hereafter (1997)
• Big Night (1996)
• Night Falls on Manhattan (1996)
• The Madness of King George (1995)
• The Advocate (1994)
• Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)
• Kafka (1991)
• Hamlet (1990)
• The Endless Game (1989)
• Henry V (1989)
• The Tailor of Gloucester (1989)
• Another Woman (1988)
• Brazil (1985)
• Dance With a Stranger (1985)
• Dreamchild (1985)
• Wetherby (1985)
• Singleton's Pluck (1984)
• Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1983)
• Time Bandits (1982)
• Chariots of Fire (1981)
• Alien (1979)
• All Quiet on the Western Front (1979)
• Holocaust (1978)
• March or Die (1977)
• The Man in the Iron Mask (1976)
• Shout at the Devil (1976)
• Juggernaut (1974)
• The Homecoming (1973)
• Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)
• The Fixer (1968)
• A Midsummer Night's Dream (1968)
• Borrowers, The/Return of the Borrowers
