No./11 Goodbye, dear Bilbo

FOR A GENERATION of film lovers — maybe more than one — the late Ian Holm will be best remembered as Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson’s trilogy. It’s not his biggest role, nor his most complex. It’sor as stoic as his role in . But he gave Bilbo so much heart and character in just a few minutes of screen time that his presence looms large through the whole trilogy. Bilbo is the first Hobbit we meet, in Galadriel’s prologue of the Ring. But the grey-haired “eleventy-one”-year-old Bilbo who pops up a few minutes later is the image that sticks: an over-enthusiastic host and warm-hearted mentor to his young nephew Frodo (Holm, of course, played Frodo years before, on radio), talking 90 miles a minute when his old wizard friend visits.