Fears have been growing for British actor Julian Sands after it emerged that he has been missing for five days in an "extremely dangerous" Californian mountain range.
The Hollywood actor - who has starred in a number of Oscar-nominated films - was confirmed to be one of the two missing hikers in the San Gabriel Mountains in California.
His family reported him missing and haven't been in contact with him since Friday are praying that the actor is safe and well, according to the an Bernardino County sheriff's office.
Described as an "an adventurer in everything he did" by a close friend, Sands previously admitted that he had never wanted to be a Hollywood actor and had been looking for "something exotic" that "took [him] out of [himself]" because he found himself a "little boring".
His eclectic career has seen him take on a huge range of films, from E.M. Forster romantic classic A Room with a View to 1990 horror comedy Arachnophobia. Among the many controversial films he starred in during the 90s was David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch, which Newsweek's David Ansen said was "obviously this is not everybody's cup of weird tea", adding: "You must have a taste for the esthetics of disgust."
Sands rewatched the film, based on the book by William S Boroughs, again in 2018 when it was shown to a sold-out cinema audience in Hollywood Boulevard.
“It wasn’t apparent to me just how significant it is,” he told the Guardian at the time. “How disturbing, how subversive, how really apropos today.”
However, it was his 1993 mystery film and body horror film Boxing Jennifer that saw his career flounder for 15 years after playing a hideous surgeon who quadruple-amputates a woman he was obsessed with. The movie had been delayed following legal battles with Madonna and Kim Basinger after they both backed out of playing Helena.
It was considered both a critical and financial failure, with critics blasting it for being poor quality. Director Jennifer Lynch has since branded the critique from her first film a "stinging experience".
"It had no chance to be seen through unbiased eyes. Did I know what I was doing? I knew what I was trying to do. And I think it's OK to fail at thing," she told the Guardian in 2009.
Yet Sands said of the film: "It just got the worst reviews and was dismissed as kind of pornographic. But, actually, the poetic and political content is, I think, very enduring.”
He later went on to shoot other films he found interesting and enjoyed playing villains in The Phantom of the Opera, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Vladimir Bierko in 24.
Among the many TV shows he starred in from 2000 included Jackie Chan Adventures, Smallville, Castle, Dexter and Gotham.
Away from the bright lights of Hollywood he is a dad to three adult children; his son Henry, who he shares with ex-wife and British journalist Sarah Harvey Sands, who he divorced in 1987, and two daughters - Natalya and Imogen - with wife and author Evgenia Citkowitz.
Sands rarely talks about his wife and children as he likes to keep his family life private, but he reflected in 2020 on his wife's pregnancy with their youngest daughter.
Speaking to Weekend magazine, he said that one of his treasured items in his Kent farmhouse was a portrait made by Imogen.
"When my wife Evgenia was pregnant with our daughter Natalya in 1996 she took a yoga class," he said.
"I saw the change in her and embraced yoga too. This mat was given to me when I first began to practise by our teacher Diane Gysbers, who studied with the master BKS Iyengar – he’s in the photo on the radiator.
"The portrait of me to the left was made by our younger daughter Imogen when she was six. She’s 20 now but I still hold it dear. "
Also among his prized possessions is a sketch of his co-star Helena Bonham Carter, which he called "beautiful".
"When we filmed A Room With A View in Florence in 1985, we needed extras with a period look and hired a bearded fellow called Patrick Hamilton who looked like an Edwardian and taught art in Florence," he explained.
"He became a friend. He did this sketch of my co-star Helena Bonham Carter and me, which I think is beautiful. "
