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Photos: Popular Actor Dies At 79

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Popular Actor Dies In Car Crash With His Three Children

Popular actor, Bernard Hill, best known for roles in Titanic and Lord of the Rings, died at 79.

He played Captain Edward Smith in the 1997 Oscar-winning film and King Théoden in the Lord of the Rings.

His breakout role was in 1982 BBC TV drama Boys from the Blackstuff, where he portrayed Yosser Hughes, a character who struggled – and often failed – to cope with unemployment in Liverpool.

He died early on Sunday morning, his agent Lou Coulson confirmed.

With him at the time were his fiancee Alison and his son Gabriel.

Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd, the actors who played the hobbits Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, paid tribute to their co-stars at Comic-Con in Liverpool.

Astin began by saying: “We love him. He was intrepid, he was funny, he was gruff, he was irascible, he was beautiful.”

 

Photos: Popular Actor Dies At 79

 

Boyd recounted watching the trilogy with Monaghan, saying: “I don’t think anyone spoke Tolkien’s words as great as Bernard did. He would break my heart. He will be solely missed.”

Alan Bleasdale, who wrote Boys from the Blackstuff, said Hill’s death was a “great loss and also a great surprise”.

“It was an astonishing, mesmeric performance – Bernard gave everything to that and you can see it in all the scenes. He became Yosser Hughes.”

He added: “I was desperate to work with him. Everything he did – his whole procedure for working, the manner in which he worked and his performance was everything that you could ever wish for.

“You always felt that Bernard would live forever. He had a great strength, physically and of personality.”

Hill, who was from Manchester and lived in Suffolk, was due to return to TV screens in series two of The Responder, a BBC drama starring Martin Freeman, which begins airing on Sunday.

In Boys from the Blackstuff, Hill drew praise for his gritty portrayal of Yosser Hughes, an intense character who pleaded “Gizza [give us a] job” as he sought work.

That show won a Bafta for best drama series in 1983, and in 2000 it was ranked seventh on a British Film Institute list of the best TV shows ever made.

Hill was set to make his return to the small screen in the BBC drama “The Responder” before his passing.

His legacy as a talented actor will be deeply missed.

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