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Bernard Hill, a British actor who incarnated a humble style of masculine leadership in three hugely successful Hollywood movies, \u201cTitanic\u201d and two films in the \u201cLord of the Rings\u201d franchise, died on Sunday. He was 79.<\/p>\n
His death was announced in a family statement sent by a representative of Lou Coulson Associates, a British talent agency. It did not say where he died or provide a cause.<\/p>\n
Mr. Hill drew praise from critics for his work in serious TV dramas, small-budget films and theater. But he was best known for playing the ship\u2019s captain in \u201cTitanic\u201d (1997) and the ruler of a horsemen\u2019s kingdom in the second and third installments of the \u201cLord of the Rings\u201d trilogy, \u201cThe Two Towers\u201d (2002) and \u201cThe Return of the King\u201d (2003).<\/p>\n
By appearing in \u201cTitanic\u201d and \u201cThe Return of the King,\u201d Mr. Hill became the first actor to star in more than one film to gross over $1 billion and the only actor to appear in two of the three films to win a record 11 Oscars (the third is \u201cBen-Hur\u201d), The Manchester Evening News reported<\/a> in 2022.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In each film, his stout frame, bushy whiskers and weathered visage helped him embody men of authority who faced danger with reluctance, then acceptance and, finally, self-sacrificial stoicism.<\/p>\n In \u201cTitanic,\u201d he was Capt. Edward J. Smith. Early in the movie, he grasps the ship\u2019s railing, looks out to sea and instructs one of his crew to increase the ship\u2019s speed: \u201cLet\u2019s stretch her legs,\u201d he declares. The movie ultimately suggests that the undue speed of the ship is a factor in its fatal collision with an iceberg.<\/p>\n After hearing the bad news, Mr. Hill walks in a daze on the ship\u2019s deck, eyes lost in the middle distance, the official regalia of his captain\u2019s outfit rendered absurd. He walks alone to the helm and stands there erect as water bursts through the windows, ensuring that he will go down with his ship.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He had a more prominent role in \u201cThe Lord of the Rings,\u201d as Th\u00e9oden, the king of Rohan. Initially prematurely aged and enfeebled because of the conniving evil wizard Saruman, he is restored to vitality by the good wizard Gandalf.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He gradually awakens to the need to fight Saruman, declaiming phrases of weary resolution like \u201cLet them come\u201d and \u201cSo it begins.\u201d He leads the Rohirrim, his army\u2019s horsemen, in a climactic victorious battle in \u201cThe Two Towers,\u201d but dies leading a charge under similar circumstances in \u201cThe Return of the King.\u201d<\/p>\n His prominence in those movies, however, did not capture the breadth of his career. Speaking to The Oxford Student, a university newspaper, Mr. Hill said<\/a> the role that changed his life was one that few Americans had heard of: Yosser Hughes, a jobless Liverpool resident with a penchant for head-butting, on British TV in the early 1980s.<\/p>\n Bernard Hill was born on Dec. 17, 1944, in Blackley, a small town outside Manchester, England. His father was a miner, and his mother worked in kitchens. <\/p>\n As a teenager, Bernard worked in construction and did not know any actors, but he wound up quitting his job and going to drama school at Manchester Polytechnic (now known as Manchester Metropolitan University). He graduated in 1970.<\/p>\n He first played Yosser Hughes in \u201cThe Black Stuff\u201d (1980), a TV movie written by Alan Bleasdale, who wrote Mr. Hill\u2019s part for him. Mr. Hill asked the writer what the character was like. \u201cWell, it\u2019s a guy that goes and smashes meat potato pies on his head and head-butts lampposts!\u201d Mr. Bleasdale said in reply, Mr. Hill recalled in a 2002 BBC interview.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The character, which Mr. Hill reprised in a 1982 mini-series, \u201cBoys From the Blackstuff,\u201d caught fire with the British public for his comic pathos in trying to support his three children alone and without work. He was particularly identified with a catchphrase that came to symbolize anger at the austerity policies of Margaret Thatcher, uttered in Liverpudlian vernacular: \u201cGizza job. Go on, gizza job. I can do that.\u201d<\/p>\n When Mr. Hill\u2019s work as Yosser Hughes appeared on American television in 1987, a New York Times TV critic, John J. O\u2019Connor, praised<\/a> his performance as \u201ca powerful tour de force, his eyes constantly conveying Yosser\u2019s bottomless despair and unending panic.\u201d Around the same time, The Times also praised Mr. Hill for playing a bouncer at a seedy nightclub \u201cwith splendid blankness\u201d in \u201cNo Surrender,\u201d a 1986 movie whose screenplay was also written by Mr. Bleasdale. <\/p>\n His survivors include a fianc\u00e9e, Alison, and a son, Gabriel.<\/p>\n When the BBC asked this miner\u2019s son about the \u201cglamour\u201d of the \u201cLord of the Rings\u201d premieres, he demurred.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, it\u2019s like running a marathon in a fur coat,\u201d Mr. Hill said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard work, but it looks glamorous from the outside.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n