Longtime character actor was nominated for Oscars for In the Bedroom and Michael Clayton
Tom Wilkinson, the Oscar-nominated British actor best known for roles in The Full Monty, In the Bedroom, and Batman Begins, has died at the age of 75.
Wilkinson’s family confirmed the charactor actor’s death Saturday in a statement (via the BBC), noting that he died “suddenly.”
“It is with great sadness that the family of Tom Wilkinson announce that he died suddenly at home on December 30,” the family said in a statement. “His wife and family were with him. The family asks for privacy at this time.”
Wilkinson was a two-time Academy Award nominee, earning a Best Actor nomination for 2001’s In the Bedroom — where he played a grieving, vengeful father whose son was murdered — as well as a Best Supporting Actor nod for 2007’s Michael Clayton.
After decades on British television, Wilkinson introduced himself to American audiences in the mid-Nineties with roles in Sense & Sensibility, The Ghost and The Darkness, and Rush Hour. However, his breakout role was as a steelworker-turned-exotic dancer in the hit 1997 comedy The Full Monty, a part that earned Wilkinson a BAFTA award for best supporting actor.
Over the next three decades, Wilkinson would also appear in Shakespeare in Love, The Patriot, Girl With the Pearl Earring, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Batman Begins (as mob boss Carmine Falcone), Duplicity, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Michael Clayton, where in an Oscar-nominated role Wilkinson played a lawyer in the throes of a manic episode opposite George Clooney’s titular fixer.
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“Tom made every project better. Made every actor better,” Clooney told Variety following Wilkinson’s death. “He was the epitome of elegance and he will be dearly missed by all of us.”
In 2008, Wilkinson won both a Golden Globe and a Primetime Emmy for best supporting actor for portraying Benjamin Franklin in the HBO historical limited series John Adams. Other notable television roles included playing Joseph Kennedy Sr. in a pair of The Kennedys miniseries, the 2008 TV movie Recount about the 2000 presidential election, and most recently, the 2023 revival of The Full Monty as a TV series, where he reprised his BAFTA-winning role.
