British actor Tom Wilkinson, known for films like The Full Monty, Shakespeare In Love and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, has died suddenly aged 75.
Wilkinson won a Bafta for 1997’s The Full Monty, and reprised the role of Gerald when a Disney+ streaming series revisited the characters 26 years on.
He received six Bafta nominations in total as well as two Oscar nominations, for Michael Clayton and In The Bedroom.
He died at home with his wife and family on Saturday, a statement said.
With more than 130 film and TV credits in total, Wilkinson was as comfortable in period dramas like 1995’s Sense and Sensibility and 2013’s Belle, as he was playing criminal masterminds in movies like Rush Hour opposite Jackie Chan in 1998, or Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla in 2008.
He also earned an Emmy for playing US political figure Benjamin Franklin in 2008 mini-series John Adams and an Emmy nomination as John F Kennedy’s father Joe in The Kennedys. He played President Lyndon B Johnson in 2014’s Selma, and appeared in The Grand Budapest Hotel and Girl with a Pearl Earring.
“It is with great sadness that the family of Tom Wilkinson announce that he died suddenly at home on December 30. His wife and family were with him,” the statement read.
“The family asks for privacy at this time.”
Wilkinson was, according to the Encyclopaedia of British Film, “a major character star, with a remarkable gift – one among several – for conveying inner pain”.
