The actor Ian Holm spent 14 seasons with the RSC from 1954 and created the role of Lenny in the production of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming, a part he has reprised several times on film and on Broadway. He spent a decade away from the theatre after a debilitating bout of stage fright and only returned in 1993 in Pinter’s Moonlight in a part specially written for him. He went on to perform a memorable King Lear directed by Richard Eyre.
He has been in dozens of films, including Alien and Chariots of Fire, but is probably best known as Bilbo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In his autobiography Acting My Life (2004) he talked frankly about his life as an actor, his four marriages and his recent treatment for prostate cancer. He was knighted in 1997. Sir Ian Holm is 75 today.
RGT
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Bertie Ahern, Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland, 55; Maria Aitken, actress, 61; Nicholas Barter, Principal of RADA, 66; Professor Ronald Hedley, educationist, 89; Michael Ondaatje, writer, 63; the Right Rev Frank Pilkington Sargeant, Bishop at Lambeth, 1994-99, 74; Robert Simpson, chairman, Antenna Audio, 2001-03, 62; Professor George Zarnecki, art historian, 91.