British actor Nicol Williamson dies at the age of 75

British actor Nicol Williamson, best known for his role in the 1981 film Excalibur, died at the age of 75.

Williamson died back on Dec. 16, but his son, Luke, waited until Wednesday to make the announcement on his father’s website. Luke wrote that his father had been battling esophageal cancer for the past two years. “He gave it all he had: never gave up, never complained, maintained his wicked sense of humor to the end. His last words were ‘I love you’. I was with him, he was not alone, he was not in pain,” Luke wrote.

According to The Los Angeles Times, Williamson was born in Hamilton, near Glasgow, Scotland on Sept. 14, 1936 into a poor family. He rose through the ranks of the British theater, joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962.

He was once credited as the best British actor of his generation. The Telegraph reports that Samuel Beckett believed he was “touched by genius” and John Osbourne called him the best actor since Marlon Brando. Williamson starred in Osbourne’s Inadmissible Evidence, the 1964 play that made Williamson famous and was just revived in London three months ago.

The New York Times reports that he had an unpredictable and boisterous personality, which he brought with him on stage. “You don’t know if he’s going to be nice to you or punch you in the mouth,” one cast member of the 1976 Broadway musical Rex described him as. Williamson also reportedly stormed off the stage during a Boston production of Hamlet, returning to the stage later to apologize.

Williamson also had a career in films, appearing as Merlin in Excalibur and also appearing in The Exorcist III. He also played Sherlock Holmes in 1976’s The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. His last film was 1997’s Spawn and in recent years, turned to music as a concentration.

Williamson died at his home in Amsterdam, where he had lived for the past 20 years. In an e-mail to the NY Times explaining why he had waited so long to announce his father’s death, Luke wrote, “He didn’t want any fuss made over his passing...He was not interested in publicity.”