Sir Ian Holm Cuthbert CBE (12 September 1931 – 19 June 2020) was an English actor. After beginning his career on the British stage as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he became a successful and prolific performer on television and in film. He received numerous accolades including two BAFTA Awards and a Tony Award, along with nominations for an Academy Award. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1989 by Queen Elizabeth II.^[1][2]

Holm won the 1967 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor for his performance as Lenny in the Harold Pinter play The Homecoming. He won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his performance in the title role in the 1998 West End production of King Lear. For his television roles he received two Primetime Emmy Awards for King Lear (1998), and the HBO film The Last of the Blonde Bombshells (2003).

He gained acclaim for his role in The Bofors Gun (1968) winning the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and won a second BAFTA Award for his role as athletics trainer Sam Mussabini in Chariots of Fire (1981). Other notable films he appeared in include Alien (1979), Brazil (1985), Henry V (1989), Naked Lunch (1991), The Madness of King George (1994), The Fifth Element (1997), The Sweet Hereafter (1997), and The Aviator (2004). He played Napoleon in three different films. He gained wider appreciation for his role as the elderly Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies.

Ian Holm Cuthbert was born on 12 September 1931 in Goodmayes, Essex, to Scottish parents, James Cuthbert and his wife Jean (née Holm). 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; his mother was a nurse.^{[3][4][5][6][7]} He had an older brother, who died when Ian was 12 years old.^[8] Holm was educated at the independent Chigwell School in Essex.^[3][8] His parents retired to Mortehoe in Devon and then to Worthing, where he joined an amateur dramatic society.^[9]

A chance encounter with Henry Baynton, a well-known provincial Shakespearean actor, helped Holm train for admission to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he secured a place from 1950.^[3][10] His studies were interrupted a year later when he was called up for National Service in the British Army,^[10] during which he was posted to Klagenfurt, Austria, and attained the rank of Lance Corporal. They were interrupted a second time when he volunteered to go on an acting tour of the United States in 1952.^[9] Holm graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1953.^[3]

He made his stage debut in 1954, at Stratford-upon-Avon, playing a spear carrier in a staging of Othello.^[11] Two years later, he made his London stage debut in Love Affair.^[11]

Holm was an established actor in the Royal Shakespeare Company before he gained notice in television and film. He began in 1954 with minor roles, progressing to Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream and the fool in King Lear.^[10] In 1965, he played Richard III in the BBC serialisation of The Wars of The Roses, based on the RSC production of the plays. He gained acclaim for his role in the 1968 film The Bofors Gun, winning the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.^[12] In 1969, he appeared in Moonlight on the Highway.^[13] He took on minor roles in films such as Oh! What a Lovely War (1969),^[14] Nicholas and Alexandra (1971),^[15] Mary, Queen of Scots (1972)^[16] and Young Winston (1972).^[17]

In 1967 Holm won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play as Lenny in The Homecoming by Harold Pinter. Holm appeared in the 1977 television mini-series Jesus of Nazareth as the Sadducee Zerah, and as the villain in March or Die. The following year he played J. M. Barrie in the award-winning BBC mini-series The Lost Boys,^[18] In 1981, he played Frodo Baggins in the BBC radio adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.^[19]

Holm's first film role to gain much notice was that of Ash, the "calm, technocratic" science officer – later revealed to be an android – in Ridley Scott's science-fiction film Alien (1979).^[20] His portrayal of the running coach Sam Mussabini in Chariots of Fire (1981) earned him a special award at the Cannes Film Festival, a BAFTA award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.^[20][21][22] In the 1980s, Holm played in Time Bandits (1981), Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984) and Brazil (1985). He played Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland, in Dreamchild (1985).^[23][24]

In 1989, Holm was nominated for a BAFTA award for the television series Game, Set and Match.^[25] Based on the novels by Len Deighton, this tells the story of an intelligence officer (Holm) who finds a security leak at the heart of his network.^[26] He continued to perform Shakespeare in films. He appeared with Kenneth Branagh in Henry V (1989)^[27] and as Polonius to Mel Gibson's Hamlet (1990).^[28] Holm was reunited with Branagh in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), playing the father of Branagh's Victor Frankenstein.^[29]

Holm raised his profile in 1997 with two prominent roles, as the priest Vito Cornelius in Luc Besson's sci-fi The Fifth Element and the lawyer Mitchell Stephens in The Sweet Hereafter. In 2001 he starred in From Hell as the physician Sir William Withey Gull.^[1] The same year, he followed up his radio role as Frodo by appearing as Frodo's older cousin Bilbo Baggins in the blockbuster film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. This brought him wider fame, somewhat overshadowing the rest of his acting career.^[1] He returned for 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 later reprised his role as the elderly Bilbo Baggins in the movie The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.^[10] Martin Freeman portrayed the young Bilbo in those films.^[30]

Holm was 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.^[31] He voiced Chef Skinner in the Pixar animated film Ratatouille (2007).^[32] He appeared in two David Cronenberg films: Naked Lunch (1991) and eXistenZ (1999).^[20] His acting was admired by Harold Pinter: the playwright once said: "He puts on my shoe, and it fits!"^[33] Holm played Lenny in both the London and New York City premieres of Pinter's The Homecoming; the BBC wrote that he "electrified audiences" in the play.^[22] He played Napoleon Bonaparte three times: in the television mini-series Napoleon and Love (1974), Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits (1981), and The Emperor's New Clothes.^[18] Holm received royal recognition for his contributions: he was made CBE in 1989 and knighted in 1998.^[3]

Holm was married four times:^[34] to Lynn Mary Shaw in 1955 (divorced 1965); to Sophie Baker in 1982 (divorced 1986); to the actress Penelope Wilton, in Wiltshire, in 1991 (divorced 2002); and to the artist Sophie de Stempel in 2003. He had five children.^[3][35]

Holm and Wilton appeared together in the BBC miniseries The Borrowers (1993). His last wife, Sophie de Stempel, was a protégée and a life model of Lucian Freud,^[36] as well as an artist in her own right.^[37]

He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1989 by Queen Elizabeth II.^[1][2]

Holm was treated for prostate cancer in 2001.^[34] He was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2007,^[38][39][40] and died in hospital in London on 19 June 2020 at the age of 88.^[41] His remains are interred on the western side of Highgate Cemetery.^[42]

• 1989: Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1989 Birthday Honours.^[85]
• 1998: Knight Bachelor in the 1998 Birthday Honours for services to drama.^[86]

• Holm, Ian; Jacobi, Steven (2004). Acting my Life. London: Bantam Press. ISBN 978-0-593-05214-3.