“Arise, arise, riders of Théoden!” The line comes from the charge in “The Return of the King,” and for a generation of cinema-goers it belongs to Bernard Hill. The actor died on Sunday, 5 May 2024, aged 79. His agent, Lou Coulson, confirmed it.
Hill was born in Manchester and lived in Suffolk. With him at the end were his fiancee, Alison, and his son, Gabriel.
Two films, eleven Oscars each
He turned up in two of the biggest productions of the era, and in both he played a man facing the end. In 1997 he was Captain Edward Smith, the real-life commander of the doomed liner in “Titanic.” The film shows him walking quietly to the wheelhouse as the ship fills with water, then taking hold of the wheel as the sea breaks through the windows. Five years later, Peter Jackson cast him as Théoden, King of Rohan, from the second film, “The Two Towers,” onward. In “The Return of the King” the king rallies his outnumbered riders on horseback, then sends them thundering downhill towards the enemy. Both films won 11 Academy Awards.
The man who asked for a job
Television is where he first made his name, though. In 1982 the BBC broadcast “Boys from the Blackstuff,” a drama about out-of-work men in Liverpool, and Hill played Yosser Hughes, who struggled with unemployment and kept begging “Gizza job.” He was nominated for a British Academy Television Award for it, and the series won best drama in 1983. In 2000 the British Film Institute ranked it seventh among the best British television programmes ever made.
Alan Bleasdale, who wrote the series, called the news “a great loss and also a great surprise.” He remembered the performance as “astonishing, mesmeric,” and added: “He became Yosser Hughes.” Of the man himself, Bleasdale said you always felt Hill would live forever, because of his strength, both physical and of personality.
A long working life
The credits stretch back further than most viewers remember. He was in “I, Claudius” for the BBC in 1976 and in “Gandhi” in 1982. “Shirley Valentine” followed in 1989, “The Scorpion King” in 2002 and “Valkyrie,” the Tom Cruise film, in 2008. In 2015 he played the Duke of Norfolk, uncle to Anne Boleyn and enemy of Cardinal Wolsey, in the BBC’s “Wolf Hall.”
His death came on the very day the second series of “The Responder” was due to begin on the BBC. He played the father of the show’s star, Martin Freeman. Lindsay Salt, director of BBC Drama, said Hill “blazed a trail across the screen” and that the corporation felt honoured to have worked with him.
At Comic Con Liverpool, the four hobbits turned out to pay tribute. Sean Astin, who played Sam, said: “He was intrepid, he was funny, he was gruff, he was irascible, he was beautiful.” Billy Boyd, who played Pippin, recalled watching the trilogy with Dominic Monaghan. “I don’t think anyone spoke Tolkien’s words as great as Bernard did,” he said. “He would break my heart.” Hill himself had been due at the convention on Saturday, but cancelled at the last minute.
Sources
- Actor Bernard Hill, of 'Titanic' and 'Lord of the Rings,' has died at 79
- Bernard Hill: Titanic and Lord of the Rings actor dies
