Veteran Brit actor succumbs after lengthy bout with cancer...

In my unofficial capacity as celebrity bell toller with Shadowlocked, it is my sad duty to once again bring news of a thespian's demise, this time Pete Postlethwaite, the brilliant actor of stage and screen. Postlethwaite passed away yesterday evening after suffering from cancer for several years.

A native of Warrington, England, Postlethwaite prepared for his acting career by training at the Bristol Old Vic and then the Liverpool Everyman Theater, where he worked alongside such English luminaries as Bill Nighy, Jonathan Pryce, and Julie Walters. He eventually moved on to small television roles, before acting in his first feature film Distant Voices, Still Lives in 1988. Five years later, Postlethwaite received his first and only Academy Award nomination as Supporting Actor for In the Name of the Father, in which he co-starred with former Old Vic protege Daniel Day-Lewis.

Many prominent roles followed thereafter, including the mysterious lawyer Kobayashi in The Usual Suspects, and parts in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, Alien 3, Amistad, The Constant Gardner, and Inception, among many others. Steven Spielberg, after directing him in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, famously called Postlethwaite "the best actor in the world". The Queen may have agreed in some capacity, as Postlethwaite was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2004's New Year's Honours List.

A veteran of nine different television series and over 40 films, Pete Postlethwaite leaves a wife and two children.

BBC News

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