Following the identification of the body discovered in the San Gabriel Mountains of southern California as being that of British actor Julian Sands, his demise has been officially declared.
The family of Sands, who was well-known for his parts in Oscar-nominated movies, including 1985’s A Room With A View, reported him missing on January 13.
The 65-year-old went missing while hiking in the San Gabriel Mountains of California’s Mount Baldy region, covered in snow at the time.
Hikers discovered human remains in the forest close to Mount Baldy on June 24. These bones were taken to the coroner’s office for identification.
Sands’ body has now been positively identified. His exact cause of death is still unknown.
The body found on Mt. Baldy on June 24, 2023, has been positively identified as North Hollywood resident Julian Sands, 65, according to a statement released today by the San Bernardino County Sheriff-Coroner Department.
“The cause of death is still being looked into, pending the results of additional tests,”
An experienced hiker and mountaineer, Sands went on to summit the peak that rises more than 10,000 feet east of Los Angeles but never returned. He was reported missing in January.
Throughout the winter, the area saw violent storms.
The actor had three adult children with US journalist Evgenia Citkowitz.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department has launched eight searches since Sands vanished on January 13th.
With a height of roughly 10,064 feet, Mount Baldy rises over Los Angeles.
Over 80 volunteers, employees, and deputies participated in their most recent search trip on June 17, but they came up empty-handed.
His family released the following statement last week: “We continue to hold Julian in our hearts with bright memories of him as a wonderful father, husband, explorer, lover of the natural world and the arts, and an original and collaborative performer.”
We appreciate the efforts of the search teams and coordinators in locating Julian.
Sands’ mother, Brenda, gave birth to him in 1958 in Yorkshire, in northern England, and after their divorce, she reared Sands and his four brothers by herself.
Before deciding to pursue acting, he received a private education at Lord Wandsworth College, a boarding school in the rural Hampshire area.
In the beginning, Sands was cast in small roles. He appeared in Privates on Parade, a 1983 television movie about a military entertainment company in Malaysia in the late 1940s, and costarred with Anthony Hopkins in 1983, A Married Man.
The Killing Fields, an acclaimed historical drama about the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, was his first significant production, released in 1984.
In the triple-Oscar-winning movie, Sands played journalist Jon Swain.
However, Sands’ role in the film adaptation of the well-known E.M. Forster book A Room with a View catapulted him to fame the following year.
In the historical drama, he plays the free-spirited and philosophic George Emerson, who falls in love with Lucy Honeychurch, a character played by Helena Bonham Carter, at a pensione in Florence.
The two shared one of the most passionate on-screen kisses ever while standing in a field of poppies.