1. Ian Holm received numerous accolades including two BAFTA Awards and a Tony Award, along with a nomination for an Academy Award.
36 Facts About Ian Holm
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Ian Holm was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1998 for services to drama.
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Ian Holm won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his performance in the title role in the 1998 West End production of King Lear.
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Ian Holm gained acclaim for his role in The Bofors Gun, winning the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
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Ian Holm 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.
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Ian Holm gained wider appreciation for his role as the elderly Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit trilogy.
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Ian Holm Cuthbert was born on 12 September 1931 in Goodmayes, Essex, to Scottish parents, James Cuthbert and his wife Jean.
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Ian Holm's 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.
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Ian Holm had an older brother, who died when Ian was 12 years old.
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Ian Holm was educated at the independent Chigwell School in Essex.
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Ian Holm's parents retired to Mortehoe in Devon and then to Worthing, where he joined an amateur dramatic society.
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Ian Holm's studies were interrupted a year later when he was called up for National Service in the British Army, during which he was posted to Klagenfurt, Austria, and attained the rank of Lance Corporal.
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Ian Holm graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1953.
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Ian Holm made his stage debut in 1954, at Stratford-upon-Avon, playing a spear carrier in a staging of Othello.
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Ian Holm was an established actor in the Royal Shakespeare Company before he gained notice in television and film.
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Ian Holm began in 1954 with minor roles, progressing to Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream and the fool in King Lear.
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Ian Holm gained acclaim for his role in the 1968 film The Bofors Gun, winning the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
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In 1967 Ian Holm won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play as Lenny in The Homecoming by Harold Pinter.
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Ian Holm appeared in the 1977 television mini-series Jesus of Nazareth as the Sadducee Zerah, and as the villain in March or Die.
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Ian Holm played Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland, in Dreamchild.
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In 1989, Ian Holm was nominated for a BAFTA award for the television series Game, Set and Match.
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Ian Holm appeared with Kenneth Branagh in Henry V and as Polonius to Mel Gibson's Hamlet.
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Ian Holm was reunited with Branagh in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, playing the father of Branagh's Victor Frankenstein.
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Ian 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.
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Ian Holm returned for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, for which he shared a SAG award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.
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Ian Holm later reprised his role as the elderly Bilbo Baggins in the films The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.
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Ian 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.
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Ian Holm voiced Chef Skinner in the Pixar animated film Ratatouille.
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Ian Holm appeared in two David Cronenberg films: Naked Lunch and eXistenZ.
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Ian Holm played Napoleon Bonaparte three times: in the television mini-series Napoleon and Love, Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits, and The Emperor's New Clothes.
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Ian Holm received royal recognition for his contributions: he was made CBE in 1989 and knighted in 1998.
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Ian Holm was married four times: to Lynn Mary Shaw in 1955 ; to Sophie Baker in 1982 ; to the actress Penelope Wilton, in Wiltshire, in 1991 ; and to the artist Sophie de Stempel in 2003.
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Ian Holm's last wife, Sophie de Stempel, was a protegee and a life model of Lucian Freud, and an artist.
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Ian Holm was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1989 by Queen Elizabeth II.
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Ian Holm died in hospital in London on 19 June 2020 at the age of 88.
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Ian Holm's remains are interred on the western side of Highgate Cemetery.