- Authorities issued a press release on Monday announcing that ongoing search efforts were conducted on Saturday in the Mount Baldy wilderness area
- The 65-year-old actor who went missing while on a snowy hike in January
- The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department has conducted eight searches on ground and air since January while looking for Sands
The search for missing English actor Julian Sands has continued more than five months after he disappeared while out on a hike.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department issued a press release on Monday announcing that ongoing search efforts were conducted on Saturday in the Mount Baldy wilderness area for the 65-year-old actor who went missing while on a snowy hike in January.
The search effort included more than 80 Search and Rescue volunteers, deputies and staff, but Sands was not located, according to the release.
Two helicopters and drone crews also supported the search effort.
Search teams were inserted via aviation resources across Mount Baldy and drone crews searched areas inaccessible to ground crews.
The Sheriff’s Department has conducted eight searches on ground and air since January in a search for Sands with volunteers searching for more than 500 hours.
‘Despite the recent warmer weather, portions of the mountain remain inaccessible due to extreme alpine conditions. Multiple areas include steep terrain and ravines, which still have 10 plus feet of ice and snow,’ the release said.
The actor’s missing person case remains active and search efforts will continue in a limited capacity.
The Sheriff’s Department on Twitter on Monday also shared videos of volunteers flying on helicopters on Saturday as part of the search for Sands.
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.
A car believed to belong to the Killing Fields star was recovered near Mount Baldy, considered one of the most dangerous climbs in the US.
The father-of-three, a keen outdoorsman who has climbed mountains all over the world, starred in 1985’s period drama A Room with a View alongside Helena Bonham Carter, and also appeared in The Killing Fields, Arachnophobia and Leaving Las Vegas. His TV credits include 24 and superhero show Smallville.
Sands has two daughters with US journalist Evgenia Citkowitz, who he married in 1990, and a son, Henry, with his first wife Sarah Sands, the former editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
His brother Nick in January said he still hoped his brother would prove his growing fears wrong and make it home alive.
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.
The star 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 Lucy Honeychurch at a Florentine pensione in the classic period drama.
The pair locked lips in a poppyfield in what is considered one of the most romantic on-screen kisses of all time.
Bonham Carter, however, later revealed the moment was improvised because they had failed to find cornflowers for the scene.
She recalled: ‘Because of the sunset we’d been waiting for days, I think, if I remember, to try and get this kiss, it had to be on the magic moment, whatever that means. And suddenly it was like, ‘Okay, you’re on, just do the kiss. Julian, you stand there; Helena, just walk!’
‘It’s very hard to walk across a plowed field in high heels, and, oh God, it was hard work. I just knew I had to get to him without falling down.
‘And then not laugh when he kissed me. And it’s really hard to kiss someone when you’re only eighteen and you haven’t done it that many times, too. So it was hard, that was hard.’
The three-time Oscar winning production featured a slew of British acting greats including Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Simon Callow and Denholm Elliott.