id="article-body" class="row" section="article-body">Ian Holm played Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogies, but the role of the hobbit was just one of his acclaimed roles.
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Ian Holm, an acclaimed British stage and film actor whose performances included everything from hobbits and androids to iconic roles from Shakespeare and Harold Pinter, died Friday morning at age 88. Holm died peacefully in a hospital surrounded by his family, his agent, Alex Irwin, said in a statement obtained by CNET parent company CBS News. His death was related to Parkinson's disease, the statement said.
Holm "had a kind of magical malleability, with a range that went from the sweet-tempered to the psychotic," The New York Times wrote.
To younger moviegoers, he may be best known to some for his role as Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings movie trilogies. (In The Hobbit, Holm played an elderly Bilbo, while Martin Freeman played the younger version.) But Bilbo wasn't his first J.R.R. Tolkien role, or even his first Baggins. In 1981, he voiced Frodo Baggins in the BBC radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.
