Peter William "Pete" Postlethwaite,
OBE [1][2] was an
English stage, film and television actor died from cancer he was 64..
After minor television appearances including in
The Professionals, Postlethwaite's first success came with the film
Distant Voices, Still Lives in 1988. He played a mysterious lawyer, Mr. Kobayashi, in
The Usual Suspects, and he appeared in
Alien 3,
In the Name of the Father,
Amistad,
Brassed Off,
The Shipping News,
The Constant Gardener,
The Age of Stupid,
Inception,
The Town,
Romeo + Juliet, and
Aeon Flux.
Postlethwaite was born in
Warrington in 1946. He trained as a teacher and taught drama before training as an actor.
Steven Spielberg called Postlethwaite "the best actor in the world" after working with him on
The Lost World: Jurassic Park. He received an
Academy Award nomination for his role in
In the Name of the Father in 1993, and was made an
Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2004 New Year's Honours List. He died of
pancreatic cancer on 2 January 2011.
(7 February 1946 – 2 January 2011),
Early life
Postlethwaite was born in
Warrington, which was then in
Lancashire, on 7 February 1946. He was the fourth and youngest child of William and Mary Postlethwaite née Lawless. He was raised in a
working-class Roman Catholic family
[3] with two sisters, Anne and Patricia, and a brother, Michael.
[4] He trained as a teacher at
St Mary's College, Strawberry Hill and taught drama at
Loreto College, Manchester, before training as an actor at the
Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
Career
Postlethwaite started his career at the
Everyman Theatre in
Liverpool, where his colleagues included
Bill Nighy,
Jonathan Pryce,
Antony Sher and
Julie Walters. Postlethwaite and Walters had an
intimate relationship during the latter half of the 1970s.
[5] He was a veteran of the
Royal Shakespeare Company and other acting companies.
On 13 January 1981, he took the leading role in a BBC TV
black comedy by
Alan Bleasdale,
The Muscle Market, which was a spin-off from
Boys from the Blackstuff; it was part of the
Play for Today series and also featured
Alison Steadman.
After other early appearances in small parts for television programmes such as
The Professionals, Postlethwaite's first film success came with the film
Distant Voices, Still Lives in 1988. He received an
Academy Award nomination for his role in
In the Name of the Father in 1993. He is perhaps best known for his role as mysterious lawyer Mr. Kobayashi in
The Usual Suspects. He also made appearances in several successful films, including
Alien 3,
Amistad,
Brassed Off,
The Shipping News,
The Constant Gardener,
Inception and as Friar Lawrence in
Baz Luhrmann's
Romeo + Juliet.
In 2003, he was both the physical and vocal actor for the villain Deeth in
Zixx: Level One, a Canadian TV series created by
IDT Entertainment. The same year, he went to Australia and New Zealand, touring a 90-minute one-man play called
Scaramouche Jones where he played a clown trying to find out why he is who he is before he dies at midnight, receiving a nomination for the
TMA Award for Best Actor and winning the
Theatregoers' Choice Award for Best Solo Performance.
[6] This was directed by Rupert Goold, who would also direct his
Lear in 2008, in which Postlethwaite played every character. As well as
Australia, the play toured
Canada,
New Zealand and
Britain to great acclaim.
[7]
In the 2004 book
The Art of Discworld,
Terry Pratchett said that he had always imagined
Sam Vimes as 'a younger, slightly bulkier version of Pete Postlethwaite'.
[8]
Steven Spielberg called Postlethwaite "
the best actor in the world" after working with the actor on the
The Lost World: Jurassic Park,
[9] to which Postlethwaite quipped: "I'm sure what Spielberg actually said was, 'The thing about Pete is that he thinks he's the best actor in the world.'"
[10]
One of his more notable roles was as antagonist
Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill in ITV's
Sharpe series, which starred
Sean Bean. Postlethwaite has said that this was one of his favourite roles and that he and Sean played so well off each other because of their mutual love and respect for each other.
Bernard Cornwell, the author and creator of the
Sharpe series, specifically wrote Hakeswill's character in later novels to reflect Postletwaite's performance as the character in the TV series. Postlethwaite also co-starred with Sean Bean in
When Saturday Comes.
Postlethwaite next starred in the Liverpool stage production of
King Lear in 2008 at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, and at the Young Vic, London. He appears in the
climate change-themed film
The Age of Stupid, premiered in March 2009. Having recently installed a
wind turbine in his garden, he said was extremely impressed by the film and made an impassioned call for action on climate change on its release in The Sun newspaper; "The stakes [of climate of change] are very, very high. They're through the roof. How could we willingly know that we're going into extinction... and let it happen."
[11][12][13]
Postlethwaite also had a minor role in the 2010 blockbuster hit
Inception. Inception is said to be the last movie Postlethwaite ever acted in, where he played the role of an ailing owner of a massive energy empire.
Awards
Postlethwaite was made an
Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2004 New Year's Honours List and received an
honorary degree from
Liverpool University in 2006. He received an
Academy Award nomination for his role
In the Name of the Father.
Personal life
Postlethwaite lived in
West Itchenor,
West Sussex, before moving to
Shropshire, near
Bishop's Castle, with his wife Jacqueline (Jacqui) Morrish Postlethwaite, a former BBC producer, whom he married in 2003 in
Chichester.
[4] They have two children, both of whom were born in Shropshire: son William John (born 1989), a drama student at
LAMDA, and daughter Lily Kathleen (born 1995).
[7] Postlethwaite was a
smoker from the age of ten.
[14] In a March 2009 interview with
Scotland on Sunday, Postlethwaite commented on his smoking habit, stating: "
We've got to hope the next generation will do things differently. I'm sure that in 20 years' time the kids will say: 'Can you believe that people actually used to smoke – put these funny little things in their mouths, lit them and sucked all that crap into their lungs?"
[15].
Political views
Postletwaite appeared as a taxi driver in one of the
Labour Party's
political broadcasts during the
1997 general election.
[16] He was an activist against climate change and at the UK premiere of The Age of Stupid, he told Ed Miliband, then-
Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, that he would return his
OBE and vote for any party other than Labour, if the
Kingsnorth coal-fired power station was given the go-ahead by the government.
[17] A month later the Government announced a change to its policy on coal – no new coal-fired power station will get government consent unless it can capture and bury 25% of the emissions it produces immediately – and 100% of emissions by 2025. This, a source told
The Guardian, represented “a complete rewrite of UK energy policy”.
[18]
Illness and death
Postlethwaite was diagnosed with
testicular cancer in 1990, and
had one testicle removed.
[19][20] He died of
pancreatic cancer at the
Royal Shrewsbury Hospital on 2 January 2011.
[21][22][23][24]
Filmography
Films
[edit] Television
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