Well-established second lead and character player of film and TV with a long face and rugged, slightly uneven features. Wilson was studying architecture in college on a basketball scholarship when an injury forced him to leave school. Later, accepting a friend's bet to take an acting class, Wilson found a new career and began working on the LA stage. Cast in a supporting role in his feature debut, the Oscar-winning "In the Heat of the Night" (1967), Wilson later found out that "Heat" director Norman Jewison had screened dailies for Richard Brooks, who was planning to adapt Truman Capote's
