Respected English actor Pete Postlethwaite passed away on Sunday aged 64 after a lengthy battle with cancer. Born in Warrington, Lancashire in 1946, Postlethwaite began his career treading the boards at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre alongside the likes of Bill Nighy, Jonathan Pryce and Julie Walters and went on to earn a reputation as one of Britain’s finest acting talents after making his breakthrough with the 1988 drama Distant Voices, Still Lives (dir. Terence Davies). Postlethwaite followed this success with roles in Hamlet (1990, dir. Franco Zeffirelli), Alien 3 (1992, dir. David Fincher) and The Last of the Mohicans (1992, dir. Michael Mann), before earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his turn as Guiseppe Conlon in Jim Sheridan’s In the Name of the Father (1993).
Postlethwaite continued to make regular TV and film appearances over the next few years, the highlight being the role of Kobayashi in Bryan Singer’s classic thriller The Usual Suspects (1995). Other notable films include Brassed Off (1996, dir. Mark Herman), Romeo + Juliet (1996, dir. Baz Luhrmann), The Shipping News (2001, dir. Lasse Hallström), The Constant Gardener (2005, dir. Fernando Meirelles) and Solomon Kane (2009, dir. Michael J. Bassett). Postlethwaite also starred in two films for Steven Spielberg in 1997 – Amistad and The Lost World: Jurassic Park – leading the acclaimed director to describe him as “probably the best actor in the world”. Despite his illness Postlethwaite appeared in three films last year – Clash of the Titans (dir. Louis Leterrier), Inception (dir. Christopher Nolan) and The Town (dir. Ben Affleck) while his final film, the comedy Killing Bono (dir. Nick Hamm), is scheduled to hit UK cinemas on April 1st.
Originally published January 3, 2011. Updated April 10, 2018.
