Tragic loss as “A Room with a View” star Julian Sands discovered lifeless after months of disappearance

Principally skeletal human stays found by hikers on June 25, within the neighborhood the place Sands had vanished, had been positively recognized by the San Bernardino County coroner as belonging to the actor, the county sheriff’s division mentioned.

The style of his loss of life remained beneath investigation, awaiting additional take a look at outcomes, the division mentioned in an assertion.

Sands, an avid outdoorsman and mountaineer, was reported lacking on Jan. 13, after he had gone mountaineering alone earlier within the day within the Baldy Bowl space of the San Gabriel Mountains, about 50 miles (80 km) northeast of Los Angeles.

The massive, slopping space beneath the crest of Mount Baldy is a well-liked vacation spot for skiers, climbers and backpackers. However authorities warned then that heavy snow from weeks of winter storms had made the realm treacherous for out of doors recreation. In a single day temperatures had been dipping into the mid-20s Fahrenheit (4 to minus 4 Celsius) that week.

A search celebration organized on the time was pulled out 24 hours later as a consequence of avalanche dangers and poor path circumstances. A number of subsequent searches got here up empty-handed, together with a significant sweep performed days earlier than Sands’ stays had been finally discovered within the Mount Baldy wilderness space, in line with the sheriff’s division.

Cellphone alerts detected on Sunday, Jan. 15, had confirmed Sands headed towards the ridge of Mount Baldy, apparently the final indication he was nonetheless on the transfer, the sheriff’s division reported then.

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An announcement from Sands’ household posted by the sheriff’s division on June 21, after the company’s newest search however earlier than his stays had been discovered, thanked search groups for his or her efforts and sounded a be aware of resignation about his destiny.

“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 assertion mentioned.

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 additionally recalled a brush with loss of life throughout a climb within the Andes within the early Nineties when he turned caught in a storm above 20,000 ft (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 because the third of 5 boys and educated at Lord Wandsworth Faculty in Hampshire, Sands started his profession with supporting roles in such movies as “Oxford Blues,” showing because the romantic rival of Rob Lowe’s lead character, and “The Killing Fields,” enjoying a younger struggle correspondent in Cambodia.

Sands moved to California within the Nineteen Eighties after the success of “A Room with a View,” an Edwardian-period romance through which he was solid because the main man reverse Helena Bonham Carter.

Primarily based on E.M. Forster’s 1908 novel of the identical title and set in England and Italy, the 1985 movie was nominated for eight Academy Awards, together with greatest image. It gained Oscars for greatest tailored screenplay, artwork path and costume design.

Creating a knack for the horror style, Sands additionally starred as a son of Devil within the 1989 supernatural thriller “Warlock” and its sequel “Warlock: The Armageddon.” He performed a spider professional within the 1990 comedy-creeper “Arachnophobia,” a twisted, obsessed surgeon in 1993’s “Boxing Helena” and the title function within the 1998 movie model of “The Phantom of the Opera.”

Different films included “Leaving Las Vegas,” “Naked Lunch” and the English-language remake of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” He additionally appeared in additional than two dozen tv exhibits, amongst them “Smallville” as Superman’s organic dad Jor-El.

Lately, Sands discovered success showing in one-man stage exhibits reciting the poetry of Harold Pinter, John Keats and Percy Shelley, the latter of which he performed within the 1986 psychological thriller “Gothic.”

Though by no means Oscar-nominated himself, Sands dated Jodie Foster and was her escort to the Academy Awards in 1989 the evening she gained her first best-actress statuette for “The Accused.” The 2 co-starred within the little-seen 1987 indie movie “Siesta.”

However the open air, and mountaineering specifically, remained a lifelong obsession.

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As quoted in a 2020 interview with Thrive International, an organization based by Arianna Huffington, Sands mentioned climbing was not about ego or a “great heroic sprint for the summit” however relatively “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’s survived by his second spouse, Evgenia Citkowitz, a journalist, with whom he had two daughters. He additionally had a son by his first spouse, journalist Sarah Harvey.