Actor's Films Included In The Bedroom, Full Monty

Tom Wilkinson, the British actor whose film career included roles in The Full Monty, Shakespeare in Love, and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, died Saturday. He was 75. A statement provided by his agent said Wilkinson was at home with his wife and family when he died suddenly, the BBC reports. His more than 130 movie and TV appearances included period dramas such as Sense and Sensibility and the superhero film Batman Begins; the actor played bad guys in Rush Hour and RocknRolla. Wilkinson was nominated twice for Academy Awards, for Michael Clayton and In The Bedroom. In his home country, he received six BAFTA nominations and was a member of the Order of the British Empire.

Wilkinson's first step toward acting came when he was asked to direct a play at age 18. "For the first time in my life, I started doing something I knew how to do," he said. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, then landed acting jobs on British TV, per Variety. In 1986, he got his first major screen role in mini-series First Among Equals, based on Jeffrey Archer's bestseller. Two years later, he married co-star Diana Hardcastle. Among his critically praised performances was as a bereaved father in 2001's In The Bedroom. Wilkinson later said that film proved two things—that "I could play the lead role in a movie" and that "I could play an American lead role."

He eventually played American historical figures: Benjamin Franklin in the mini-series John Adams, for which he received an Emmy; John F. Kennedy's father, Joe, in The Kennedys; and President Lyndon Johnson in Selma. Wilkinson's career went next level when he appeared in a low-budget 1997 movie playing a former factory foreman who joins unemployed colleagues in putting on a strip show, a role he almost didn't take. The Full Monty became the UK's highest-grossing film. "I'm temperamentally suited to the business of acting," Wilkinson told the Guardian. "I'm quite fatalistic. If it's not happening, it's not happening, and there's very little you can do." (More obituary stories.)