Full Monty actor Tom Wilkinson dies aged 75

Actor played character Gerald Arthur Cooper in the 1997 comedy

British Oscar-nominated actor Tom Wilkinson, best known for his role in The Full Monty, has died aged 75, his family have announced.

The statement read: “It is with great sadness that the family of Tom Wilkinson announce that he died suddenly at home on 30 December. His wife and family were with him. The family asks for privacy at this time.”

In an acting career spanning six decades, Wilkinson is best known for playing Gerald Arthur Cooper in the 1997 comedy, which tells the story of a group of six unemployed steelworkers from Sheffield on their journey to set up an all-male striptease act.

For his role in the film, he received the Bafta for best actor in a supporting role.

He most recently reunited with his co-stars, Robert Carlyle and Mark Addy, in a Disney+ series of the same name.

The original film won an Oscar for best original musical or comedy score and was nominated for three others, including best director and best picture.

Wilkinson was nominated for Academy Awards for actor in a leading role for In The Bedroom in 2001, and actor in a supporting role for Michael Clayton in 2007.

He also featured as Hugh Fennyman the theatre owner in the 1998 romcom Shakespeare In Love, as well as playing the criminal mastermind in Rush Hour opposite Jackie Chan in 1998. Wilkinson also starred in the 2003 film Girl with a Pearl Earring, the 2005 Christopher Nolan blockbuster, Batman Begins and the 2011 film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Tom Wilkinson photographed in 2015 (Getty)

In 2009, he won a Golden Globe Award and a Primetime Emmy Award for best supporting actor for playing Benjamin Franklin in the 2008 HBO series John Adams. He has been remembered in tributes as a versatile actor who many directors, producers and actors were delighted to work with.

Born in Yorkshire in 1948, Wilkinson became fascinated with acting and directing with the drama society at the University of Kent, where he studied literature. Pursuing his acting career, Wilkinson graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada) in London in 1973.

In 1988, he married his wife, actor Diana Hardcastle, and together, they went on to play husband and wife roles in The Kennedys in 2011, and in the 2014 action film Good People. The couple share two daughters, Alice and Molly.

Tom Wilkinson and his wife Diana Hardcastle photographed in 2002 (PA)

Reflecting on his acting career in an interview with The Independent in 2014, Wilkinson said that he went straight into his first acting job after he left Rada.

“It was in The Mother by Brecht, at the Half Moon in Old Street. You didn’t get any money, but you got Thursday morning off to sign on the dole,” he said.

After establishing himself on stage at the Royal Shakespeare Company and on-screen in TV shows such as Inspector Morse and Prime Suspect, Wilkinson said that he got to the point where he could decide what sorts of roles he wanted to play.

“I’d got to the point where I could do more or less what I wanted on stage and TV,” he said. “I wasn’t offered soap operas, only heavyweight drama. The top echelons of TV would come to me.”

Tom Wilkinson, Hugo Speer, Paul Barber and Robert Carlyle in ‘The Full Monty’ (Fox Searchlight/Kobal/Shutterstock)

When he was in his forties, Wilkinson decided to give up theatre and TV when he saw friends in America forging movie careers. He subsequently broke through into Hollywood and appeared in dozens of blockbuster films.

“I said to my agent, ‘I don’t want to do any more TV or stage. I just want films,’” he told The Independent.

Wilkinson also appeared in a BBC adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel Martin Chuzzlewit, the 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense And Sensibility, the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the 2014 Wes Anderson comedy drama The Grand Budapest Hotel.

In the 2005 New Year Honours, Wilkinson was given an OBE for services to drama.

On social media, Wilkinson is being remembered by fans and former colleagues as a versatile actor who was “great in absolutely everything”.

Whitechapel and The Firm actor Phil Davis wrote on Twitter/X: “RIP Tom Wilkinson, a wonderful actor, powerful and delicate and hugely intelligent. One of the very best. I was a huge fan.”

Producer Beau Flynn added: “I had the great privilege of making a film with Tom and he is [not] only a world-class actor but also a world-class gentleman. He was a gem. Godspeed.”

American film writer Brian Michael Lynch said that Wilkinson was “so likeable and funny”.

“Rest In Peace Tom Wilkinson. So many wonderful performances, my favorite being his turn in THE FULL MONTY,” Lynch wrote.

Actor Charlotte Wakefield wrote on X that she had the “absolute honour” of working with Wilkinson on her first acting job: the 2002 film An Angel For May, in which Wilkinson starred as Sam Wheeler.

“He taught me so much and took so much time to make me feel welcome on set,” she wrote. “I’ve admired his work ever since. A huge loss.”