Actor Bernard Hill, who starred in ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Titanic,’ dies at 79

Bernard Hill, the British actor best known for his portrayal of embattled King Théoden in two of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy movies and the stoic Capt. Edward Smith in “Titanic,” has died. He was 79.

Hill died early Sunday, his agent Lou Coulson confirmed to the BBC. No lead to was specified.

The actor’s breakout part was in the 1982 BBC series “Boys From the Blackstuff,” actively playing Yosser Hughes, a operating-class male working with unemployment in Liverpool. The series aired all through a time of superior unemployment in England, and his character’s catchphrase “gizza job” (“give us a job”) became a well known buzzword throughout the state.

Hill experienced a extensive and prolific vocation, appearing in the two critically acclaimed tv, such as the 1976 BBC series “I, Claudius,” and films, among them Richard Attenborough’s 1982 photograph “Gandhi,” as effectively as the 2002 motion picture “The Scorpion King” and 2008’s “Valkyrie,” starring Tom Cruise.

In 2015, Hill performed the Duke of Norfolk in “Wolf Hall,” an adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s e book about the court of Henry VIII.

Most lately, Hill starred in the BBC police drama “The Responder.” Its next year is set to air Sunday.

Hill was born Dec. 17, 1944, in Manchester to a rigid Catholic mining relatives. He expressed shock that he experienced turn into a productive actor, telling Oxford University’s student paper: “From my social lifestyle, my peers, my relatives, there was no indication that this is where I really should go.”

He attended Xaverian Faculty in Manchester and the Manchester Polytechnic University of Drama. At drama university, he turned entranced by David Warner’s efficiency of “Hamlet.” “I just wanted to do what he was performing,” he claimed.

Hill later on worked with Warner, who performed Billy Zane’s villainous henchman Spicer Lovejoy, in the blockbuster 1997 film “Titanic”

Alan Bleasdale, who wrote “Boys From the Blackstuff,” informed the BBC that Hill’s loss of life was “a fantastic loss and also a terrific surprise.”

“I was determined to work with him. Almost everything he did — his complete process for operating, the method in which he labored and his functionality was all the things that you could ever would like for,” mentioned Bleasdale. “You usually felt that Bernard would reside endlessly. He had a good power, bodily and of character.”

Hill is survived by his spouse, Marianna Hill, and their son, Gabriel.