What has been assumed for some time has now been confirmed. Actor Julian Sands died sometime after January 12 while hiking in the rugged Mount Baldy region of California, northeast of Los Angeles.

Human remains discovered on 24 June by hikers in the area where Sands disappeared were identified as those of Sands on 27 June.

An idiosyncratic actor, Sands will be remembered for roles in the 1985 film A Room with a View, Warlock (1989) and for playing the role of Franz Liszt in Impromptu (1991), a production directed by James Lapine featuring Judy Davis as the novelist Georges Sand and Hugh Grant as Frederick Chopin. Sands and Grant worked hard to look convincing as pianists. According to The New York Times:

“To insure the film’s musical credibility, Mr. Lapine engaged not only a piano coach, to advise Mr. Grant and Mr. Sands on posture, fingering and even breathing at the keyboard, but also a music consultant, John Strauss, a Yale-trained composer. Mr. Strauss, who worked with Milos Forman on Ragtime and Amadeus, has devised a method to help actors play musicians, using recordings punctuated with beeps and clicks.”

Sands, wrote the New York Times in its review of the film, “has the hair and accent for his role as...