Despite runaway success with A Room With A View, Julian Sands never allowed himself to be pigeon holed to one genre.
Julian Sands was – according to those close to him – fearless, pushy and “too beautiful for Hollywood to really know what to do with him”.
The actor was confirmed dead on Tuesday, more than five months after he went missing while hiking in the Californian mountains.
His body was discovered by hikers in the Mount Baldy region of the San Gabriel mountains on Saturday. He was 65 when he died.
Director Mike Figgis, who was a close friend and colleague of the late actor, described him as “genuinely fearless”.
Figgis told The Guardian that the first time he had met Sands at a casting meeting in 1987, the actor had been “pushy”, claiming he was perfect for the part.
“I found his boldness very endearing. He was wrong for the role… but I was very tickled by his enthusiasm and we became friends.”
The pair went on to work on eight films together over almost three decades, from The Browning Version in 1993 to Mother Tongue in 2020.
“I’ve never met anyone like him,” he said.
“He was totally different from every Hollywood actor I know: he loved working and he loved walking.”
Advertisement
Screenwriter Gennifer Hutchison described Sands as “strange and wonderful and another character actor who was too beautiful for Hollywood to really know what to do with him”.
Actor Alessandro Nivola called him “an eccentric, hilarious, wildly intelligent and passionate artist”, adding he was “a great friend”.
“None of the eulogies are doing his talent justice,” he wrote.
