Oscar-Nominated Actor Ian Holm Passes Away at 88

Ian Holm, a British character actor earned a much-deserved Oscar nomination for his role as athlective trainer in Chariots of Fire has passed away at the age of 88.

Holm died "peacefully in hospital" of complications from Parkinson’s disease, The Guardian quoted his agent as saying.

Holm gained many sci-fi admirers for his performances as Ash, the decapitated android who keeps on going, in Ridley's Scott's Alien (1979) and as the office manager Mr. Kurtzmann in another classic, Terry Gilliam's fantastical Brazil (1985).

Holm was at his subtle best as Gena Rowlands' emotionally unavailable husband in Woody Allen's Another Woman (1988) and as an inscrutable big-city lawyer in the tragedy-laced The Sweet Hereafter (1997), written and directed by Atom Egoyan.

Holm later portrayed Bilbo, all for Peter Jackson, in The Lord of the Rings films The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) and The Return of the King (2003) and in The Hobbit installments An Unexpected Journey (2012) and The Battle of the Five Armies (2014).

"I'm never the same twice," he told the Los Angeles Times in 2000, "and I'm not a movie-star type, so people don't demand that I'm always the same."

May his soul rest in peace.