John Malkovich reflects on ‘closest friend’ Julian Sands: He ‘grew up wild on the moors’

John Malkovich has reflected on his close friendship with Julian Sands after the British actor went missing on a hiking trip more than five weeks ago.

Sands – best known for his breakout movie, A Room With a View (1985) – was reported missing in the Mounty Baldy area of the San Gabriel mountains in California.

Efforts to track down the actor were repeatedly hampered by adverse weather conditions.

Malkovich stars alongside his “closest friend” Sands in Seneca – On the Creation of Earthquakes, which premiered at Berlin Film Festival this week.

“I haven’t really talked about what happened with Jules,” Malkovich told The Guardian in a new interview.

“But, in a way, it’s a choice, because he was an inveterate mountain climber/hiker. He was always tramping off to Kilimanjaro, or Antarctica, or the Andes, or the Alps – a very experienced climber who’d been through very hairy experiences.

“I suppose the particular conditions on the ground that day on Mount Baldy must have led to some sort of catastrophic and immediate error that was irreversible. That was my instinct upon hearing it. But he knew what the conditions were, and that’s what he loved to do. He found great solace in the solitude of that.”

Malkovich added that Sands often went off on solo adventures, “which is quite wild in itself, but he’s a boy who grew up wild on the moors and – despite being someone who could be incredibly erudite and polished – had always kept that wild part of himself”.

The two actors met on Roland Joffé’s 1984 drama about Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime, The Killing Fields.

The pair worked on a number of projects together, even living together, according to The Guardian. Malkovich explained that he knows his ex-wife Sarah Sands, former editor of the Evening Standard and Radio 4’s Today programme, very well and is the godfather to their son, Henry.

Malkovich also introduced Sands to his wife, Evgenia. “I love Jules. He was someone who was very, very clever,” he said.

Earlier this week, the San Bernardino sheriff’s department vowed to “bring closure” to Sands’ family, though, an imminent storm meant that search efforts would be again delayed “for some time”.

The actor’s family previously praised the “heroic” efforts of Californian authorities involved in the searches, and were “deeply touched” by the support they had received.