Julian Sands and His Amazing Shock of Hair

It may seem like a silly way to start off a career retrospective by focusing upon your subject’s coif, but I’ll be damned if Julian Sands didn’t have one of the most unusual heads of hair I’ve ever seen. The first time I saw him on screen in The Killing Fields way back in 1984, I remember thinking, that guy is going to be bald in, I don’t know, the next 15 minutes? Yet somehow, throughout his career, despite the wispy nature of his locks, he held onto that shock of hair down the center of the scalp that kept the runway from clearing. Maybe this is just something premature bald guys notice (I started losing my battle with male pattern baldness in my mid-twenties), but Sands’ really did seem like a man whose follicles refused to get the message that a man in his twenties (as he was during The Killing Fields) is not supposed to defy the natural order of things. 

Perhaps the only thing stranger about Sands than his resilient widow’s peak was his career itself. Over the course of more than 40 years in film and TV, Sands appeared in some of the most well-received projects of his era, and also some of the schlockiest. 

On the plus side of the ledger is the aforementioned The Killing Fields, his breakout role in Merchant & Ivory’s A Room With A View, The Box of Delights for BBC TV, Arachnophobia, Impromptu, Gothic, Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch, Leaving Las Vegas, Time Code, The L Word, 24, Ocean’s Thirteen, Smallville, Dexter, Banshee, The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo, Gotham, The Blacklist, and Elementary. 

In many of these productions he had small parts, but every time he appeared in anything I was watching, I always got a bit of a goose. Sands was not only a fine actor, but an unmissable presence. There was something elegant about the way he carried himself. Maybe at some point in his career Sands played a dumb guy, but I’m not aware of it. I think that’s because he positively oozed intelligence and a certain manner that one might call upper-crust or high-toned. 

Sands managed to give off that vibe even in the numerous projects he took on that were, well, let’s just be kind and call them “B-level.” I know from running a video store way back in the day that keeping a copy of his supernatural cheapie Warlock (and its even sillier sequel Warlock: The Armageddon) on the shelf was nearly impossible. I’ve seen Warlock (I passed on Armageddon), and while I would never describe it as a “good movie,” I’ll be damned if Sands didn’t make it watchable. 

Perhaps the role Sands is most known for is the one he didn’t get: that of Lestat in Neil Jordan’s adaptation of Interview With The Vampire. The author of the book the film was based on (Anne Rice) was very public in desiring either Sands or Sting as Lestat, but the studio wanted a blockbuster name to go with the film’s blockbuster budget, and, so, they chose Tom Cruise to play a French Vampire in 18th century New Orleans. To be fair to Cruise, while seriously miscast, he gave it his all, and while a film with Sting or Sands might have been a hard sell to the masses, it’s hard not to think that from a pure artistic point of view that Rice wasn’t on to something. Cruise is an incredibly American actor who doesn’t give off anything close to an aristocratic vibe, or even a supernatural one (unless you count his stunt work). Sands seemed to live in that space. 

Oddly enough, my favorite film that Sands appeared in is a little seen movie directed by Mike Figgis (Sands and Figgis worked together four times) called One Night Stand. While the title very specifically references an evening of passion between Wesley Snipes and Nastassja Kinski’s characters, the heart of the film is between Snipes and his best friend (played by a rarely better Robert Downey Jr.) who is dying of AIDS. It’s a remarkable little gem that wasn’t well reviewed and practically no one saw it. Something that if I had the power to change with a snap of my fingers, I’d be snapping like mad right now.

So, who did Sands play in One Night Stand? “Charlie’s Nurse.” That’s right, Sands didn’t even get a name, but in his very few scenes with Charlie (Downey Jr.), Sands, with seemingly no effort at all, comes off as competent, professional, and deeply kind. He barely has any lines, but he doesn’t need them. Just that empathetic face, that regal bearing, and that remarkable head of hair, which seemed to look mortality in the eye and say, “Not today.”

Sadly, as they say, “Father Time is undefeated,” and Sands proved to be no exception when it comes to the battle to keep breathing. That being said, he left behind an incredibly varied and eccentric body of work. One well worthy of our collective memories. 

Julian Sands died on June 24, 2023. He was 65 years old.