{"id":21202,"date":"2024-05-28T19:16:29","date_gmt":"2024-05-29T03:16:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/?p=21202"},"modified":"2024-05-28T19:17:18","modified_gmt":"2024-05-29T03:17:18","slug":"actor-bernard-hills-dies-at-79","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/actor-bernard-hills-dies-at-79\/","title":{"rendered":"Actor Bernard Hills dies at 79"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Written by: Jaylin Hardin | Sports Editor<\/span><\/p>\n

The death of actor Bernard Hill was announced on May 5, 2024 by a representative of Lou Coulson Associates, the British talent agency of which Hill was a member. The agency\u2019s statement did not include or mention his cause of death since Hill led a private life, despite his roles in major blockbusters. He was 79 years old.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hill was a well-known actor in British television, specifically on the British Broadcasting Channel, BBC, but his biggest roles were that of King Theoden in \u201cThe Lord of the Rings\u201d trilogy and Captain Edward Smith in \u201cTitanic.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hill is considered a movie icon by many. \u201cThe Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King\u201d and \u201cTitanic\u201d earned one billion dollars at the global box office: Hill was the first person to be in two movies that achieved these numbers. \u201cThe Return of the King\u201d and \u201cTitanic\u201d both won 11 Oscars, which means Hill starred in two out of the three movies ever to achieve such success \u2014 the 1959 film \u201cBen-Hur\u201d is the third.<\/span><\/p>\n

Former co-stars of Hill\u2019s took to social media to share their grief for the loss of the actor.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo long to our friend, our king, Bernard Hill. We will never forget you,\u201d actor Elijah Wood posted to X, previously Twitter. Wood then quoted \u201cThe Return of the King:\u201d \u201cFor he was a gentle heart and a great king and kept his oaths; and he rose out of the shadows to a last fair morning.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Karl Urban also shared his grief for Hill on Instagram, \u201cTo the King. Rest in peace, Bernard.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Urban and Wood starred in \u201cThe Lord of the Rings\u201d alongside Hill, Urban playing Eomer, the nephew of King Theoden, and Wood playing Frodo Baggins, the trilogy\u2019s main protagonist. Hill\u2019s Titanic co-stars did not comment on the actor\u2019s passing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hill worked for years in British theater and television. Those close to him said he would often claim his role as Yosser Hughes, from the 1980 movie \u201cThe Black Stuff,\u201d as the role that changed his life. He would go on to reprise this role in a miniseries, \u201cBoys from the Blackstuff.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Hill was set to reprise his role in the BBC drama \u201cThe Responder,\u201d starring alongside Martin Freeman, another actor in the Middle-Earth Cinematic Universe \u2014 Freeman played Bilbo Baggins in \u201cThe Hobbit\u201d trilogy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think anyone spoke Tolkien\u2019s words as great as Bernard did,\u201d said actor Billy Boyd,\u00a0 who played Peregrin \u201cPippin\u201d Took in \u201cThe Lord of the Rings\u201d trilogy. \u201cHe will be sorely missed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Contact the author at howlsports@wou.edu<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1094,"featured_media":21204,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3238,3237,3236,3234,2998,3233,3235,3232],"class_list":["post-21202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-bernard-hill","tag-billy-boyd","tag-frodo-baggins","tag-leonardo-dicaprio","tag-lord-of-the-rings","tag-theoden","tag-theoden-king","tag-titanic"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1094"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}