Two-time Oscar nominee Tom Wilkinson, known for his roles in The Full Monty, Batman Begins, and Shakespeare in Love, has passed away at age 75.
The British actor’s agent sent a statement to news outlets on behalf of his family.
“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.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Wilkinson was born in 1948 in Yorkshire, northern England, and grew up in Canada and in Cornwall, where his family operated a pub. He studied literature at the University of Kent, but took up acting in school and subsequently attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
He worked primarily in television for the first two decades of his career, before making his breakthrough in film with The Full Monty in 1997, in which he played a laid-off steel mill foreman-turned-male stripper, and for which he won an award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. He went on to appear in a string of big-budget movies, including Rush Hour and The Patriot, but earned attention from the Academy Awards with his roles in the 2001 indie film In the Bedroom and the 2007 George Clooney thriller Michael Clayton.
He received an Order of the British Empire in 2005, for “services to drama.” He lived in London with his wife, fellow actor Diana Hardcastle. The couple met while making the TV series First Among Equals in 1986, and married two years later. They had two children.
