Thomas Jeffery "Tom" Wilkinson, OBE (born
12 December 1948) is a two time
Academy Award-nominated, as well as
BAFTA Award-,
Emmy Award- and
Screen Actors Guild Award-winning actor.
Biography
Personal life
Wilkinson was born in
Leeds,
West Yorkshire, the son of Thomas Wilkinson, Sr., a
farmer.
[Tom Wilkinson Biography. Tiscali.co.uk.][Tom Wilkinson biography. Yahoo! Movies.] At the age of four, he moved with his family to
Canada, where they lived for several years before returning to
England and running a
pub in
Cornwall.
Wilkinson graduated from the
University of Kent, where he was a member of
T24 Drama Society (then named UKCD) and attended the
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Wilkinson currently lives in London with his wife, actress Diana Hardcastle, and his two children, Alice, 20 and Mollie, 17.
Career
Wilkinson made his television debut in the mid-1970s and worked on several British
television series, first gaining critical acclaim with his appearance as Mr Pecksniff, in the
BBC's 1994 adaptation of
Martin Chuzzlewit. He made only the occasional film (including a brief appearance in 1995's
Sense and Sensibility) until he became more prominent with
The Full Monty in 1997.
That success was followed up by
Oscar and Lucinda,
Wilde,
Shakespeare in Love,
The Patriot,
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
Normal,
The Exorcism of Emily Rose,
Batman Begins, and
Todd Field's
In the Bedroom, for which he was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Actor, and
Separate Lies. In 2007 Wilkinson played the manic depressive attorney Arthur Edens in
Michael Clayton and garnered much critical acclaim and a nomination for the academy award for Best Supporting Actor.
He received a
Doctor of Letters honorary degree from the University of Kent in July 2001.
[www.kent.ac.uk/about/hongrads/honorary-grad00.html] In the New Year Honours List published
31 December 2004, he was appointed an
OBE for services to
drama.
In 2008, Wilkinson portrayed American patriot
Benjamin Franklin in the HBO mini-series
John Adams. In the HBO movie,
Recount, Wilkinson also portrays American Statesman and lawyer,
James A. Baker, in Baker's capacity as Chief Counsel to George W. Bush during the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election controversy, receiving an
Emmy Award for the former and a nomination for the latter.
Filmography
Awards
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