Tom Wilkinson, the beloved and acclaimed British actor who was an always welcome fixture of movies and TV, has died, according to the BBC. He was 75. No cause of death has yet been released.
For decades, Wilkinson gave dozens of performances that were forceful yet soulful, characters who steamrolled their way into stories but were held back by neuroses and pain. He played all manner of types:
- The disgruntled, prideful former foreman who’s been lying to his wife about being unemployed in The Full Monty.
- The grieving father who goes too far in In the Bedroom, for which he received his first Oscar nomination.
- The self-doubting creator of a questionable memory-erasing procedure that part of him suspects does more harm than good in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
- The snarling, terrifying mob boss Carmine Falcone who doesn’t see a more sinister force taking over Gotham in Batman Begins.
- The crooked litigator so wracked with guilt over what he’s done that he loses his mind in Michael Clayton, for which he received his second Oscar nom.
- A self-hating Lyndon B. Johnson who has to fight both fellow politicians and himself to do something good in Selma.
There are many roles besides, all of them richly portrayed by one of England’s finest character actors. Wilkinson mostly subsisted on supporting characters, though he never kept to the background. He always forced his way to the forefront with the power of his presence, creating magnetically complicated characters who visibly wrestled with demons.
His work seemed to slow down a bit in the last few years, though he was always still around. One of his last turns was reprising one of his breakthrough roles in Disney+’s Full Monty revamp. There’s plenty more besides, memorable turns in Sense and Sensibility, Rush Hour, Shakespeare in Love, Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla, Valkyrie, Duplicity, Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Ghost Writer, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Snowden, and many more. The cinema, and the world, is poorer for no longer having him in it.
(Via BBC)