Ian Holm other well-known film roles include Ash in "Alien", Sir William Gull in "From Hell", Father Vito Cornelius in "The Fifth Element", and the hobbit Bilbo Baggins in "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" film series. Holm was born Ian Holm Cuthbert on 12 September 1931 in Goodmayes, in Essex, to Scottish parents, Jean Wilson (née Holm) and James Harvey Cuthbert. His mother was a nurse, and his father was a psychiatrist who worked as the superintendent of the West Ham Corporation Mental Hospital and was one of the pioneers of electric shock therapy. He had an older brother,
Alien (creature in Alien franchise) O'Bannon said in an interview, "when suddenly, that word "alien" just came out of the typewriter at me. "Alien". It's a noun and it's an adjective." The word "alien" subsequently became the title of the film and, by extension, the name of the creature itself. Prior to writing the script to "Alien", O'Bannon had been working in France for Chilean cult director Alejandro Jodorowsky's planned adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic science-fiction novel "Dune". Also hired for the project was Swiss surrealist artist H. R. Giger. Giger showed O'Bannon his nightmarish, monochromatic artwork, which left O'Bannon deeply disturbed. "I had never