Hikers in California found human remains near the area where British actor Julian Sands went missing in January.

The A Room with a View star, 65, disappeared on 13 January while hiking in the San Gabriel Mountains.

According to officials from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, they will complete their formal identification of the body in the coming week.

Sands, from West Yorkshire, disappeared in the Baldy Bowl area north of Los Angeles during bad weather.

“Civilian hikers contacted the Fontana Sheriff’s Station after they discovered human remains in the Mt Baldy wilderness,” the sheriff’s department said in a statement, which gave no further details ahead of identification.

Sands’s family issued a statement early this week expressing gratitude “to the search teams and coordinators who have worked tirelessly to find Julian”.

They added: “We continue to hold Julian in our hearts with bright memories of him as a wonderful father, husband, explorer, lover of the natural world and the arts, and as an original and collaborative performer.”

Over the course of a film career spanning four decades, Sands also had roles in The Killing Fields, Ocean’s Thirteen, and Leaving Las Vegas.

– Cover Media