Tom Wilkinson has died, aged 75. Unexpectedly, according to the statement made public by the family, in the same statement in which those close to him ask for privacy: the same privacy that has always defined this leading British actor, both in Great Britain and in Hollywood.
Wilkinson has been a precision actor, all-rounder, versatile and imaginative. That he twice aspired to the Oscar without getting it. The first for The Room (2001), where he played a father bereaved by the death of his son, and the second for Michael Clayton (2007), a convoluted and disenchanted judicial thriller, starring George Clooney. Despite his many awards, among which there are also half a dozen nominations for the BAFTA awards, the British Oscars, and his more than 130 titles throughout his career, including works in film, television and of course theater, Many will continue to ask when they hear his name: Tom, what?
And Wilkinson has been essential in such renowned historical comedies as Sense and Sensibility (1995) and Shakespeare in Love (1988); in blockbusters such as Nolan's Batman Begins (2005), or in smaller, auteur projects such as The Grand Budapest Hotel or, to add another title, Girl with a Pearl Earring. The truth is that there will be those who will not give it a face, no matter how fond they are of cinema, until we say that Tom Wilkinson is one of the protagonists of Full Monty (1997), that epoch-making tragicomedy about questioned masculinity in times of unemployment .
In Full Monty, the deceased actor plays a steel foundry worker from Yorkshire, who together with his laid-off colleagues decide to put on a sexy show to earn some money. The show consists of performing a dance with a final nude, the full monty of the title. None of them are young or have the best bodies, but they add value to the matter and, of course, a lot of humor.
And although Full Monty has defined his career in a definitive way, Wilkinson has been one of those chameleon actors, who imbue with their personality the role they have been given without imposing themselves, in the same way that a perfume leaves an impossible trail behind it. to define. It is a characteristic of good British Shakespeare-trained performers, with the great Laurence Olivier at the helm. Actors who owe themselves to the character but never to his ego: Wilkinson was one of those. Another of his great successes, as an actor, for example, was the comedy The Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012). A comedy with its eyes on a more mature audience in which the cast was ensemble, without any name imposing itself on another.
Shakespeare, it is true, was very present in his formation. He was born in 1948 in Wharfedale, near Yorkshire, a tiny industrial town that could well have hosted the protagonists of Full Monty. And after many trips he settled in London during his youth, to train as an actor at the Royal Academy of Interpretation in the British capital. His first major role was in a BBC television series, First among equals, based on a novel by Jeffrey Archer. The important thing about that production was, in fact, that during filming he met Diana Hardcastle, whom he married, and with whom, over time, he would play, as husband and wife, in The Kennedys (2011). A family collaboration that would be repeated in Good People (2014).
One would say that Tom Wilkinson has not been a star. Nor is it necessary that he has done it. Of course he has been, as he himself recognized, an actor who has not stopped working and "that is true success," Wilkinson himself stressed in an interview with The Guardian newspaper. His name may not stick in your memory, but his work certainly does, as in In the Name of the Father (1993), and in something as opposite as Rush Hour (1998), alongside Jackie Chan, without forgetting his gangster role in RocknRolla (2008), directed by Guy Ritchie.
Tom Wilkinson was awarded an Officer of the British Empire in 2005 for services to the performing arts, both comedy and drama.
