There’s an endearing grumpiness to Tom Wilkinson. The two-time Oscar nominee has little room for frivolities. He possesses none of the media-trained falseness of a big star.

But a star he is. He has appeared in acclaimed dramas In The Bedroom, Michael Clayton and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind and smash hits like Batman Begins. He’s done television too, most notably The Kennedys and John Adams. Now, he appears alongside Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer in Gore Verbinski’s big budget western The Lone Ranger.
Wilkinson plays a corrupt railroad tycoon, whose plotting leads to the murder of many members of the native Comanche tribe. Despite its anti-colonialist undertones, the film has attracted criticism for casting Depp as the Native American Indian character, Tonto.
It’s not the first time one of Wilkinson’s projects has caused a stir. In 2011, the actor starred in a television mini-series chronicling the lives of the Kennedy family. With a star-studded cast including Greg Kinnear and Katie Holmes, it was dropped from The History Channel’s scheduling due to questions about its accuracy – and the conservative politics of the show’s executive producer Joel Surnow.
“It’s frustrating when you hear of these political controversies afterwards,” says Wilkinson with an irritated sigh. “You think it’s good. Somehow it’s been prevented from entering the marketplace in the way it should do because of stuff that isn’t really relevant to the film itself. And all due to external conversations and motivations.
“I thought they handled the race issue well in The Lone Ranger,” he adds, “though I understand why people would get irritated about it. I stay out of it. I just do the project then walk away. What happens afterwards is other people’s concern.”
The actor exudes a North of England level-headedness that he attributes to his working-class background and what he describes as a “rather prosaic attitude towards my job in the sense of fame and all that.”
A theatrical actor for years, Wilkinson only began pursuing film projects in his 40s, getting his big break in the British hit comedy The Full Monty in 1997. He’s glad to have avoided the pitfalls of early success.
“I would hate to be someone who is 24 and has broken into the industry,” he says. “When I started, I thought ‘I’ll act until my seventies and then if I want to, I’ll retire’. And that seemed a legitimate path. Now young actors live hand-to-mouth because fame has eclipsed the merits of talent. It can all be taken away from you by the press coverage and TV shows and all that fame crap. It’s awful.”
Wilkinson lives a quiet life in London with his wife, The Kennedys co-star Diana Hardcastle. They both spend a lot of time filming in America. Wilkinson is very critical of the country, saying he would never consider it a second home.
“I couldn’t live there. I find the political and cultural themes bizarre. The political debate is conducted – even by British standards – at such a crude level. I was there for a lot of the Presidential campaign last year and I just thought, ‘Talk about something important!’ It was all abortion and gay marriage – these things are important, but they’re not going to shape the destiny of the nation, whereas decent economic policies will. It’s a very strange culture. There’s a teenage narcissism to it.
“You watch the news, and it’s like the rest of the world doesn’t exist. That thing about 25 percent of Americans not having passports? They really don’t know a lot about the rest of the world, and yet they’re infuriated by it. So there’s this growing sense that everyone just wants to throw bombs at them. It creates a paranoia that’s now becoming evident in these weird surveillance techniques – and the extent to which they’re used. It’s shocking.”
Having tried his hand at a blockbuster, Wilkinson says he won’t be taking on a project of the scale of The Lone Ranger again.
“It was a very big commitment in terms of time, being away from my family and working in a very uncomfortable environment,” he reflects. “It’s good to have it under my belt, but I won’t do another.”