Hikers on Saturday found human remains in a Southern California mountain area where British actor Julian Sands disappeared five months ago, authorities said.
The body was discovered around 10am in wilderness near Mount Baldy.
It was transported to the coroner’s office for identification next week, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.
Sands, an avid hiker and mountaineer, was reported missing on January 13 after setting out on the peak that rises more than 10,000 feet east of Los Angeles. The region was pounded by severe storms during winter.
On Friday, his family released its first statement since Sands’ disappearance.
‘We continue to hold Julian in our hearts with bright memories of him as a wonderful father, husband, explorer, lover of the natural world and the arts, and as an original and collaborative performer,’ the statement said.
Sands, who is known for his roles in Oscar-nominated films including 1985’s A Room With A View, was reported missing by his family on January 13 after disappearing during a trek in the Mount Baldy area of California’s San Gabriel Mountains.
Julian Sands is pictured sitting on a peak of the Weisshorn mountain in the Swiss Alps in September 2022
Search crews have been working tirelessly to locate the famous actor. Their last search mission included over 80 search and rescue volunteers, deputies and staff. Two helicopters, drone crews and aerial searches were deployed during the mission looking in some of the more remote areas across Mount Baldy, but the missing actor was not located
Sands, a 65-year-old British-born actor best known for his role in the 1985 film ‘A Room With a View,’ is married to journalist Evgenia Citkowitz and has three adult children.
Sands, 65, was reported missing by his family after disappearing in the dangerous mountain range
Since Sands’ disappearance on January 13, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department has conducted eight searches.
Their most recent search mission, on June 17, included more than 80 volunteers, staff and deputies, but did not find any trace.
Mount Baldy towers above Los Angeles and is approximately 10,064 feet high.
The mountain has been described by skilled hikers as one of one of the deadliest mountains in the United States, and has been reported as one of the worst records for death and injury in the US, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Since 2020, there have been more than 100 searches for missing hikers on Mount Baldy, with six confirmed deaths, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.
A map of the area in which Julian Sands, 65, was reported missing
The region is home to some of the most popular trails in Los Angeles, California
His family reported him missing at 7.30pm on January 13 and rescuers recovered a snow-covered car, which was towed away
Sands’ first major production was 1984’s The Killing Fields, the acclaimed historical drama about the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (pictured alongside John Malkovich)
Pictured: Sands and Helena Bonham Carter on set for the award-winning 1985 film A Room With A View
Sands and his wife, US journalist Evgenia Citkowitz, wed in 1990 and share two children together
Sands was born in 1958 in Yorkshire, northern England, to mother Brenda who raised him and his four brothers alone following her divorce.
He was privately educated at Lord Wandsworth College, a boarding school in the Hampshire countryside, before making the leap into acting.
Sands initially landed minor roles, starring alongside Anthony Hopkins in the 1983 TV film A Married Man, and appearing in Privates on Parade, about a military entertainment group in Malaysia in the late 1940s.
His first major production was 1984’s The Killing Fields, the acclaimed historical drama about the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
Sands starred as journalist Jon Swain in the triple-Oscar winning film.
But it was his turn the following year in the adaptation of the classic E.M. Forster novel A Room With A View that propelled Sands to stardom.
Portraying the philosophical and free-thinking George Emerson, he falls in love with Helena Bonham Carter’s character, Lucy Honeychurch, at a Florentine pensione in the period drama.
The pair locked lips in a poppy field in what is considered one of the most romantic on-screen kisses of all time.
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