Ian Holm Biography

Fast Facts

• Decided to become an actor at age 7 after seeing Charles Laughton in a stage production of Les Miserables
• Made his stage debut in 1954 as a spear carrier in Othello, and spent more than a decade with the Royal Shakespeare Company
• First big-screen role was in the 1968 drama The Bofors Gun, for which he won a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor
• Developed a case of stage fright in 1976, leaving in the middle of a preview performance of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh; did not return to the theatre until 1993, when he appeared in Harold Pinter's Moonlight
• Attracted the attention of Hollywood in 1979, when he portrayed the android Ash in Ridley Scott's classic Alien
• Appointed a Commander of the British Empire in 1989, and knighted in 1998
• Published his autobiography, Acting My Life, in 2004