I adored Julian. I’ve never met anyone like him. Our first encounter was in 1987, when I was casting my first film, Stormy Monday. We had a coffee in the Hyatt hotel on Sunset Boulevard and he basically thrust himself forward and said: “I’ve got to play this part! This is me.”
He was so pushy but I found his boldness very endearing. He was wrong for the role; I ended up casting Sean Bean. But I was very tickled by his enthusiasm and we became friends.
We would go to concerts with his wife, Evgenia. I immediately got along very well with her, and I love his children too – I’m godfather to his daughter, Natalya. Julian introduced me to the farmers market in LA, a hipster hang-out where the likes of Paul Mazursky and Robert Altman would have breakfast. The last time I was there, this April, the lady from the coffee stall was in tears about what had happened.
When we made Leaving Las Vegas in 1995, I wanted to get in better shape. So every morning at 7am I would go to Julian’s house and he put me through private gym hell. But it worked!
Julian was basically my ensemble; we made eight films together. The first was The Browning Version in 1993, with Albert Finney and Greta Scacchi. He was on the same flight from LA as Ridley Scott and the other producers and Matthew Modine. They were all at the front of the plane and Julian was in coach. But he really didn’t give a damn. And then he went on to beat Ridley at tennis, which Ridley was very keen on.
From then on, whenever I was making a film, I would tell Julian. He never asked which part it was. He didn’t care. But he could also completely create a role. When we made more experimental films like Timecode he said: “I just wanna play a masseuse”, and became the connective tissue and funniest thing in the film. The same with Hotel. He said: “I just wanna be a tour guide and talk about the fascist history of Venice”, which he was fascinated by.
We shot Hotel on the Lido in Venice out of season. Everything was closed except the hotel and restaurant we’d taken over. And Julian became, in a sense, the entertainment. He was very funny and loved to be outrageous. We’d all go to dinner; he’d leave early, and then there’d be some prank once when we arrived back at the hotel. Always a little bit dark. I can’t really get into specifics, but he liked to challenge the prudishness of hipster actors. He had an uncanny knack, like a heat-seeking missile, of focusing on someone and finding out exactly what their hangups were.
Younger actors would easily fall under his magnetism. He was like Svengali sometimes. On Hotel, Burt Reynolds wasn’t so comfortable with our improvisatory style and had been fairly aggressive in our open sessions. Julian zoned in on him and did an improvisation about how Burt’s face was a thing of beauty and reconstruction. Burt took on the challenge and the two of them went into this kind of surreal actors’ improv chess game. It ended in a draw.
Julian was conscious of the power of his charisma and his looks, in an impish, devilish kind of way. And perhaps because he was so handsome, he was very secure in himself. So his vanity level was almost zero. He was happy to wear the most ugly thing. At Vanity Fair-type parties, he was someone to keep an eye on. He had absolutely no fear of the social contract.
I think this was because he had such a strong, intellectual home with his wife and children. He was surrounded by books; an avid reader, a lover of music and culture. His house in Hollywood was a calm place filled with beautiful furnishings (he was an expert on Islamic carpets) from which he could venture forth and be as bold and experimental as he wanted.
He was genuinely fearless. I remember the big earthquake in LA in 1994. Julian’s house was built on brick stilts surrounded by a narrow crawlway and he went to inspect the foundations during aftershock week, when there were big tremors every couple of hours. If there was a war, I’d want to be next to Julian, because he would know when to surrender and when to stick his head above the parapet. I totally trusted his physical judgement.
People think of him as a posh Merchant Ivory type. But he was always making films with first time directors somewhere in eastern Europe or in an interesting location where he could go climbing. He was totally different from every Hollywood actor I know: he loved working and he loved walking.
He was truly subversive and selfless. A lot of the films we made were really low-budget, so he couldn’t have been paid much. He didn’t complain and even helped move equipment. He was like Albert Finney: never saw the films, was just interested in the process. He was a great listener and so collaborative. I can’t remember a single incident where Julian was a problem. He was always the solution.
We last made a movie together in 2020, called Mother Tongue. He did three weeks of quarantine in Hong Kong during Covid for three days filming. Not a word of complaint. He said: “I’ve brought lots of books with me. It’s fine. I’m really happy.”
I remember clearly the last thing we did. I rewrote his entire scene an hour-and-a-half before we shot it. I gave it to him and he said: “OK, give me 20 minutes.” He went off and learned it, and everybody was amazed. He said: “When you work with Figgis, you’ve got to be prepared for stuff like this.” Just made it into a joke.
I’ve been re-editing the film recently, and re-engaging with Julian. I kept putting off the cut. I didn’t want to finish editing his scenes, because I realised that would be it – my last engagement with him.
I would look forward to seeing him a couple of times a year. We last met around this time in 2022. He was in London and popped into my studio and we had lunch and a really good chat and took a selfie.
The past five months have been a kind of strange hiatus. It has been pretty clear from very early on that he wasn’t coming back. So there’s been this kind of no-man’s-land in which he’s been in another sphere. He had a near-death experience a couple of years ago, when he was climbing in South America. I’m sure at some point I had a discussion with him about the kind of burials where they’d put your body on a mountain, animals would come and eat you and then you’d become part of that kind of cycle.
But for me, the convention of closure, which has now come, brings with it a release of emotion. The realisation that he really has gone and we will not meet again. So I’m saying goodbye to my friend. I will miss him terribly.
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‘We laughed so hard we cried’: three more actors and directors pay tribute
James Ivory, writer and director, A Room with a View
Julian Sands’ fate was as mysterious as his lived life. That’s what he would have liked. Let’s pray it was swift and painless for him.
Jennifer Lynch, director, Boxing Helena
I once laughed so hard with Julian that we both ended up crying. It was something we would smile about any time we saw each other. It was wonderful to have had that moment, and to keep reliving it over the years was a huge gift. The world was a better place because Julian was in it, plain and simple. He will be missed and never forgotten.
Terence Davies, director, Benediction
My dear Julian, It was so lovely to have had the chance to meet and work with you. You gave a tremendous performance and brought so much to the film, as all great actors do. RIP Julian, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
