The Curse of the “Warlock”: the tragic fate of the actor Julian Sands, who died in the mountains

Julian Sands was born in England and was the third of five brothers. Incidentally, his younger brother Quentin was voted “Britain’s Sexiest Man” by She magazine in 1998.

Sands’ career began with supporting roles, but in 1985 a breakthrough came. The actor played the main male role in the film Room with a View, where he became his partner with Helena Bonham Carter. The film received eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, eventually winning three statuettes. After this project Julian became really famous. The following year saw the release of Ken Russell’s Gothic, in which Sands played poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

And around the same time, Julian decides to move to the United States and pursue a career in Hollywood. Was it a fateful decision that changed his entire career and later life? Let’s leave this question without a definitive answer. But the fact remains that the vector of Sands’ development as an actor has changed.

If Julian started in historical films, then after moving to the States, horror films became the main genre of the actor, which brought him popularity. In this period, it is worth highlighting the films “Warlock”, the first part of which was released in 1989, “Arachnophobia” (1990) and Jennifer Lynch’s thriller (yes, the daughter of the same David Lynch) “Elena in a box” (1993).

“After establishing himself as one of the great British stars in the historical films of Edwardian England, Julian moved on to a number of more whimsical roles. It’s just a terrible situation,” his friend recalled.

However, it cannot be said that his career was completely destroyed. In 1995, Sands played a supporting role in Leaving Las Vegas alongside Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue and received a Golden Globe for his work. And then in the actor’s filmography there were notable projects: “Ocean’s Thirteen”, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, “Dexter”.

A close friend of the actor was John Malkovich, with whom they starred in the film “The Killing Fields”, released in 1984. Since then, they maintained a relationship: John was even the godfather of Sands’ first child, and then introduced him to his second wife.

Malkovich likened Julian to Tarzan, emphasizing his love of freedom and physical strength. At the same time, the actor spoke of his friend as a “very, very smart person” who passionately loved literature.

“Julian is wild and never held back by rules or boundaries. He is a Byronic romantic and adventurer, drawn to the extremes of nature, enjoying the freedom of the mountains he conquers around the world,” a close friend of Sands told The Independent.

However, Julian adored the mountains and was an avid traveler, although he was aware of all the risks and got himself into extreme situations. He noted that his greatest joy was when he was “near the top of the mountain on a beautiful cold morning.”

Sands told The Guardian in 2020 that conquering “a remote peak in the high Himalayas like Makalu” was at the top of his list of goals. He was on the verge of death during an excursion in the Andes in the early 1990s, when he and three other tourists “crashed into a terrible storm at an altitude of more than 6 thousand meters.”

Unfortunately, the good fortune ran out in January 2023 when Sands went hiking in the mountains near Los Angeles and disappeared. The search operation was complicated by the severely deteriorated weather. As a result, the remains of the actor were not found until almost six months later.

Relatives of the actors were in painful ignorance all the time, hoping for a miracle. Since 1990, Julian has been married to journalist Evgenia Sitkovitsova, with whom two daughters were born. Sands has a son from a previous marriage to British journalist Sarah Harvey.

In an interview, the actor shared that he would like his children to remember him as an “interesting and funny father.”

Sands said: “Life is short, so be kind and grab it with both hands”.

Unfortunately, Julian himself couldn’t keep her.

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