Titanic and Lord of the Rings actor Bernard Hill dies at 79

Bernard Hill, a British actor who embodied a humble style of male leadership in three blockbuster Hollywood films, Titanic and two films in the Lord of the Rings franchise, died on Sunday. He was 79 years old.

His death was announced in a family statement sent by a representative of Lou Coulson Associates, a British talent agency. He did not say where he died or give a cause.

Mr. Hill has received critical acclaim for his work in serious television series, low-budget films and theater. But he was best known for playing the captain of the ship in Titanic (1997) and the ruler of a kingdom of horsemen in the second and third installments of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Two Towers (2002) and The Return of the King (2003). ).

By appearing in Titanic and The Return of the King, Mr. Hill became the first actor to star in more than one film grossing more than $1 billion and the only actor to appear in two of the three films to gross a record 11 Oscars (the third is Ben-Hur), The Manchester Evening News reported in 2022.

In each film, his sturdy build, bushy mustache and weathered face helped him portray men of authority who faced danger with reluctance, then acceptance and, finally, with selfless stoicism.

In Titanic, he was Captain Edward J. Smith. At the start of the film, he grabs the ship's rail, looks out to sea, and asks one of his crew members to increase the ship's speed: Let's stretch his legs, he says. The film ultimately suggests that the ship's excessive speed was a factor in its fatal collision with an iceberg.

After hearing the bad news, Mr. Hill walks, dazed, on the deck of the ship, his eyes lost in the distance, the official insignia of his captain's outfit rendered absurd. He walks alone to the helm and stands tall as water gushes through the windows, ensuring that he will go down with his ship.

He played a larger role in The Lord of the Rings, playing Thoden, the king of Rohan. Initially aged prematurely and weakened by the evil conniving wizard Saruman, he regains his vitality through the good wizard Gandalf.

He gradually awakens to the need to fight Saruman, declaiming phrases of weary resolution like Let Them Come and So It Begins. He leads the Rohirrim, the horsemen of his army, in a decisive victorious battle in The Two Towers, but dies leading a charge under similar circumstances in The Return of the King.

His notoriety in these films, however, did not reflect the extent of his career. Speaking to The Oxford Student, a university newspaper, Mr Hill said The role that changed his life was one few Americans had heard of: Yosser Hughes, an unemployed Liverpool resident with a penchant for headbutting, on British television in the early 1980s.

Bernard Hill was born on December 17, 1944 in Blackley, a small town outside Manchester, England. His father was a miner and his mother worked in the kitchens.

As a teenager, Bernard worked in construction and didn't know any actors, but he ended up quitting his job and going to drama school at Manchester Polytechnic (now known as Manchester Metropolitan University). He graduated in 1970.

He first played Yosser Hughes in The Black Stuff (1980), a television film written by Alan Bleasdale, who wrote the role of Mr. Hills for him. Mr. Hill asked the writer what the character was like. Well, this is a guy who will smash meat and potato pies over his head and headbutt lampposts! Mr. Bleasdale responded in response, Mr. Hill recalled in a 2002 BBC interview.

The character, which Mr. Hill reprized in a 1982 miniseries, Boys From the Blackstuff, sparked British public enthusiasm for his comic pathos in trying to support his three children alone and out of work. He was particularly identified with a slogan which symbolized anger at Margaret Thatcher's austerity policies, delivered in the Liverpudlian vernacular: Gizza job. Come on, gigza job. I can do it.

When Mr. Hills as Yosser Hughes appeared on American television in 1987, a New York Times television critic, John J. O'Connor, praised his performance as a powerful tour de force, his eyes constantly conveying bottomless despair and Yosser's endless panic. Around the same time, the Times also praised Mr. Hill for playing a bouncer at a seedy nightclub with splendid emptiness in No Surrender, a 1986 film whose screenplay was also written by Mr. .

His survivors include a fiancée, Alison, and a son, Gabriel.

When the BBC asked the miner's son about the glamor of Lord of the Rings premieres, he hesitated.

Well, it's like running a marathon in a fur coat, Mr. Hill said. It's hard work, but it looks glamorous from the outside.