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,
Ian Holm appeared with Kenneth Branagh in "Henry V" (1989) and as Polonius to Mel Gibson's "Hamlet" (1990). Holm was reunited with Kenneth Branagh in "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" (1994), playing the father of Branagh's Victor Frankenstein. Holm raised his profile in 1997 with two prominent roles, as the stressed but gentle priest Vito Cornelius in "The Fifth Element" and the tormented plaintiff's lawyer in "The Sweet Hereafter". In 2001 he starred in "From Hell" as the physician Sir William Withey Gull. The same year he appeared as Bilbo Baggins in the blockbuster film "", having previously played Bilbo's nephew Frodo Baggins in