A ‘just-add-water’ actor

“MICHAEL Clayton” writer/director Tony Gilroy didn’t cast a wide net when it came to finding an actor for the thriller’s pivotal role of Arthur Edens, a New York law firm’s brilliant -- albeit manic-depressive -- litigator, who goes off his medication when the strain of a $3-billion class-action suit becomes too much for him.

Gilroy had only one actor in mind: Oscar-nominated British thespian Tom Wilkinson, whose roles have included a husband dealing with the murder of his son in “In the Bedroom,” a rock-solid family man who has a sex-change operation in the HBO movie “Normal, Ohio,” and a middle-aged executive who joins a group of other unemployed men to raise money in a most unusual way in “The Full Monty.”

It was the critical and commercial success a decade ago of “The Full Monty” that put the character actor on the international map.

The moment “Michael Clayton” got the green light, Gilroy had a conversation with star George Clooney, who plays the title character, the firm’s “fixer.”

“George was saying, ‘Who do you see for that part?’ I said, ‘Tom.’ He said, ‘Go for it.’

“I think it was only 10 days after George came onboard, I went right up to Montreal [where Wilkinson was working] and offered him the part. I never went anywhere else.”

Over the phone from his London home, the 58-year-old actor is sweet, but a man of few words.

Ask him what type of research he did for the part of Edens and he simply says: “I go by the script. I am not a big one for research. If I was required to have a skill that I didn’t possess, I would have to go and learn that skill, but I’m really lazy.”

Lazy?

It’s hard to believe laziness played any part in his haunting portrayal of Edens, who, when the film opens, has gone from being a ruthless rainmaker to a man who realizes how many lives he may have destroyed working on class-action suits, not for the little guy but for the multimillion-dollar corporations.

Despairing at the damage done by a large chemical company with its toxic weed killer, Edens quits taking his medication and goes berserk during a deposition, flying into a rage and taking off all his clothes. Clayton is then dispatched to rein in Edens before the entire case goes up in flames.

Despite his mental instability, Edens’ brilliance still shows itself in flashes, especially in a scene in which Clayton confronts him one night on the streets of Manhattan.

“He is having a breakdown, but it’s not a breakdown that had just come out of the blue,” Wilkinson says.

“The trigger to what has happened to Arthur is this sort of moral revolution against what he has been doing for most of his life.”

Wilkinson is such a multifaceted actor that all of his performances seem effortless.

“Actually, I’ll let you in on a little secret,” he says. “Acting isn’t difficult if it’s a good script. It should be the most natural thing in the world if you are an actor.”

Gilroy, who is the son of “The Subject Was Roses” playwright Frank Gilroy, describes Wilkinson as an actor who knows when to show restraint.

Because there are a lot of showy acting scenes in the film, Gilroy needed someone who could handle the sequences without histrionics. “There is a great opportunity for a lot of misbehavior,” Gilroy says. “You couldn’t have someone who was going to look at [the role] as real estate.”

Additionally, he felt Wilkinson could grasp the complexities in Edens. “You need to feel there is this very serious, experienced litigator who has been a real monster,” Gilroy says.

“I think the way he has run his career has been very, very aggressive. You need to feel the intelligence, but there needed to be a sweetness. I wanted the audience to have affection for this character, but you didn’t have to ask for it. You want to know what the character is feeling, but aren’t sure what he is going to do next. Tom is just the kind of actor who can do that. He’s quietly exciting.”

Wilkinson made certain that he didn’t turn Edens into a sentimental teddy bear. “Sentimentality is the actor’s worst enemy,” Wilkinson says. “You can see that some actors are very prone to it. It ruins everything they do. I am not a sentimental man, but I recognize sentiment.

“I just recently finished playing for HBO, in the miniseries ‘John Adams,’ the role of Benjamin Franklin, and the fact of the matter is, the way it was written, he was a nice guy. So I played him as a nice guy.”

Gilroy describes Wilkinson as a “just-add-water” actor. “You just make sure you have film in the camera and you stand back. He’s very private when he’s working -- socially, he can be very gregarious -- but he likes precision.”

Wilkinson says he is very grateful for how his career has developed during the last decade. “I’ve had my English agent for 30 years, and I have had the same American agent for 10 now. They have always steered me in the direction of good stuff. I think the thing I like a lot in the past 10 years is that I haven’t made that many awful films! They all have had something to recommend.”

susan.king@latimes.com