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Tom Wilkinson: Full Monty
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Although the action flick turned out to be mediocre at the box office, Monty became a hit and Wilkinson suddenly became one of the busiest actors in Britain and the United States. His performance as Gerald in the Academy Award-nominated comedy garnered him a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. The following year, he won kudos and a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Fennyman in John Madden's Academy Award-winning Shakespeare in Love.
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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.
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Active in film and television since the mid-'70s, Wilkinson became familiar to an international audience in 1997 with his role as of one of six unemployed workers who strip for cash in Peter Cattaneo's enormously successful comedy The Full Monty. That same year, he was featured in Gillian Armstrong's Oscar and Lucinda, and as the rabidly unpleasant father of Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde's young lover in Wilde. Wilkinson was ... shown to memorable effect as a theater financier with acting aspirations in Shakespeare in Love (1998); also in 1998, he acted in one of his few leading roles in The Governess, portraying a 19th century photographer with an eye for the film's title character (Minnie Driver).
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Wilkinson became more familiar to international audiences in 1995, when he made Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, which was followed by Smilla's Sense of Snow and his real breakthrough performance in The Full Monty (1997). Other movies Wilkinson made include, The Governess, Rush Hour, Shakespeare in Love, The Patriot, and Chain of Fools.
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Though he garnered good reviews on stage, Wilkinson soon switched to film, debuting in 1987's First Among Equals. His breakthrough role came in Ang Lee's lush 1995 period drama Sense and Sensibility followed by a hilarious turn in 1997's The Full Monty, which earned the actor a BAFTA award as well as an international audience. Other notable films include Shakespeare in Loveand The Patriot. After staying under the Hollywood radar for much of his career, Wilkinson was showered with critical and popular acclaim for his performance in 2001's In the Bedroom. His turn as a doctor coping with an unraveling marriage after the murder of his son earned him his first Academy Award nomination.
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Wilkinson is one of those brilliant character actors -- like Mirren or James Broadbent or Bill Nighy -- who appear to grow willy-nilly in the English climate, bursting into American cinematic consciousness relatively late in life. Ten years after he successfully made the leap from the London stage to the big screen with the Academy Award-nominated indie sensation "The Full Monty," Wilkinson is celebrating his second Oscar nod, for his portrayal of the addled American corporate litigator Arthur Edens in writer-director Tony Gilroy's legal thriller, "Michael Clayton."
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