RIP Bernard Hill
This would appear to be a weekend for sad news, and I’m afraid I have some more.
Bernard Hill who played King Theoden in Peter Jackson’s epic of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has passed at the age of 79.
Hill was born to a catholic mining family in Manchester, in 1945. He got into the business when Britain still required actors to earn their Equity card. Meaning he spent most of his twenties in out of way corners of Britain in local stage productions. Back then an actors would help each other out by constantly switching parts for various performance in order to get the necessary hours to earn their Equity card and then get decent jobs. The upshot of that is that actors of that generation learned how to perform a wide variety of character roles. It was an excellent journeyman’s apprenticeship.
He got his his TV role in 1974 as “Janey’s Father” meaning he was little more than furniture on the set. He would spend the next eight years playing various barely credited roles, however, that changed in 1982 when landed part of Yosser Hughes in the Black Stuff. He mostly played major supporting roles and in the 1990s started getting work in American films. When James Cameron hired him to play the Captain of the Titanic, Edward Smith, he caught the eye of New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson.
The heroic but doomed King Theoden would be Hill’s best known role.
Bernard Hill
1945 – 2024
“Where now are the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the harp on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the deadwood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?”
