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

Julian Sands was born in England and was the third of five brothers. By the way, her younger brother Quentin was chosen by She magazine as “Britain’s sexiest man” in 1998.

Sands’ career began with supporting roles, but in 1985 there was a turning point. The actor played the main male role in the film A 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 the 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 fatal decision, changing his entire career and later life? Let’s leave this question unanswered. But the fact remains that the vector of development of Sands as an actor has changed.

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

“Having established himself as one of Britain’s great stars of historic Edwardian England films, Julian moved on to a series of fanciful roles. It’s just a terrible situation,” his friend recalled.

However, it cannot be said that his career was completely ruined. In 1995, Sands had a supporting role in Leaving Las Vegas alongside Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue, receiving a Golden Globe for her work. And then in the filmography of the actor 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 together in the film “The Killing Fields”, released in 1984. Since then, they have had a relationship: John was even the godfather of Sands’ first child, then introduced him to his second wife.

Malkovich compared Julian to Tarzan, noting his love of freedom and physical strength. At the same time, the actor spoke of his friend as a “very, very intelligent person” who was passionately fond of literature.

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

Julian, however, loved the mountains and was a great traveler, although he was aware of all the risks and even found himself in extreme situations. He noted that he was happiest when he was “near the top of the mountain on a gorgeous cold morning”.

Sands told the Guardian in 2020 that conquering “a remote peak in the high Himalayas like Makalu” was high on 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 hikers “fell into a terrible storm over 6,000 meters”.

Alas, the reserve of luck ran out in January 2023, when Sands took a mountain walk near Los Angeles and disappeared. The search operation was complicated by severely deteriorated weather conditions. As a result, the actor’s remains weren’t found until almost six months later.

The actor’s relatives were all this time in painful ignorance and hoped for a miracle. Since 1990, Julian has been married to journalist Evgenia Sitkovits, 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 take it with both hands”.

Alas, Julian himself could not keep her.

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