Ian Holm, Malleable Actor Who Played Lear and Bilbo, Dies at 88

Ian Holm Cuthbert was born Sept. 12, 1931, in Goodmayes, England. Because his father was a doctor and the superintendent of a mental hospital, he was fond of saying that he was born “in a loony bin,” hinting that it qualified him to be an actor. Holm was his mother’s maiden name.

After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, he made his stage debut at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1954 as a spear carrier in “Othello.” He was a member of the Shakespeare company there for two years, then made his London debut in 1956 in “Love Affair.”

Returning to Stratford with the newly formed Royal Shakespeare Company, he quickly moved up in the ranks, along with Judi Dench, Ian Richardson and Diana Rigg, among others. He played Sebastian in “Twelfth Night,” Puck in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and the Fool to Charles Laughton’s Lear.

Mr. Holm added Chekhov to his laurels in 1961. In a Royal Shakespeare Company production of “The Cherry Orchard,” starring Peggy Ashcroft, John Gielgud, Judi Dench and Dorothy Tutin, he played Trofimov. In his biography “Peggy Ashcroft,” Michael Billington wrote that Alec Guinness told him that Mr. Holm’s Trofimov — “intense, urgent, on the brink of neurosis” — was “very much the kind of performance” that Guinness would have liked to have given when he played the role in 1939.

In 1963, in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of “The War of the Roses,” Mr. Holm was a psychopathic Richard III. Subsequently he shifted to Prince Hal and his older incarnation as Henry V, which he did in repertory with “The Homecoming.” Mr. Hall, again the director, said, “The company of actors, led by Peggy Ashcroft and Ian Holm, had made something live that had never lived before.”