Pete Postlethwaite
At the Make Poverty History march in Edinburgh, 2004
Born	Peter William Postlethwaite 7 February 1945 (1945-02-07) (age 64) Warrington, England, UK
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1975–present
Spouse(s)	Jacqueline Morrish (2003-present)

Peter William "Pete" Postlethwaite, OBE (IPA: ['pɒsəlθweɪt]; born 7 February 1945)^[1] is an Academy Award-nominated British actor.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Awards 4 Personal life 5 Filmography 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Early life

Postlethwaite was born in Warrington, England, to Mary Geraldine and William Postlethwaite as their third and youngest child. He trained as a teacher at St Mary's College, Strawberry Hill and taught drama before training as an actor at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

Postlethwaite started his career at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre where his colleagues included Bill Nighy, Jonathan Pryce, Antony Sher and Julie Walters. Postlethwaite and Walters were lovers for the latter half of the seventies and lived a ramshackle bedsit life in Soho.^[2]

Postlethwaite is a veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company and other acting troupes.

[edit] Career

After routine early appearances in small parts for television programs such as The Professionals, Postlethwaite's first 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. His performance as the mysterious lawyer "Kobayashi" in The Usual Suspects is also well-known, and he later made appearances in several successful films, including Alien 3, Amistad, Brassed Off, The Shipping News, The Constant Gardener, and as Friar Lawrence in Baz Lurhmann's Romeo + Juliet.

In 2003, he was both the physical and vocal actor for the villain Deeth in Zixx: Level One, a Canada|Canadian TV series created by IDT Entertainment. The same year, he went to Australia, touring a 90-minute one-man play called Scaramouche Jones where he is a clown trying to find out why he is who he is before he dies at midnight.^[3] Directed by Rupert Goold, who would also direct his Lear in 2008, Postlethwaite played every character. As well as Australia, the play toured Canada, New Zealand and Britain to great acclaim.^[4]

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'.^[5]

Steven Spielberg called Postlethwaite "the best actor in the world" after working with the actor on the The Lost World: Jurassic Park,^[6] of which Postlethwaite says: I'm sure what Spielberg actually said was, "The thing about Pete is that he thinks he's the best actor in the world."'^[7]

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 favorite 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 Postlewaite'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 really impressed by the film.^[8][9]

[edit] Awards

He was made an OBE in the 2004 New Year's Honours List. At the premiere of The Age of Stupid on 15 March 2009, he promised the UK Energy and Climate Change minister Ed Miliband that he would return this medal if the government gave the go-ahead for new coal-fired units at Kingsnorth power station.^[10][11]

[edit] Personal life

He lives in Shropshire, near Bishop's Castle, with his wife Jackie, a former BBC producer, whom he married in 2003 in Chichester, West Sussex.^[12] They have two children, both of whom were born in Shropshire: William John (born 1989), a drama student at LAMDA, and daughter Lily Kathleen (born 1996). ^[13]

Postlethwaite was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1990, and had one testicle removed. ^[14][15]

[edit] Filmography

• Afternoon Off (1979) (TV)
• A Private Function (1984)
• Coast To Coast (1987)
• Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988)
• Treasure Island (1990) (TV)
• Hamlet (1990)
• Zorro (1990) (TV episode "The Marked Man").
• The Grass Arena (1991)
• Alien 3 (1992)
• Split Second (1992)
• The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
• In the Name of the Father (1993)
• Anchoress (1993)
• Sharpe's Company (1994) (TV)
• Suite 16 (1994)
• Sharpe's Enemy (1994) (TV)
• Martin Chuzzlewit (1994) (TV)
• The Usual Suspects (1995)
• When Saturday Comes (1996)
• Brassed Off (1996)
• Dragonheart (1996)
• James and the Giant Peach (1996)
• Romeo + Juliet (1996)
• Amistad (1997)
• Bastard (Bandyta) (1997)
• Crimetime (1997)
• The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
• Among Giants (1998)
• Lost for Words (1999)
• Wayward Son (1999)
• Animal Farm (1999)
• The Divine Ryans (1999)
• Rat (2000)
• The Shipping News (2001)
• Strange Bedfellows (2004)
• Dark Water (2005)
• Æon Flux (2005)
• The Constant Gardener (2005)
• The Omen (2006)
• Closing the Ring (2007)
• Liyarn Ngarn^[16] (2007)
• Solomon Kane (2008)
• Criminal Justice (2008) (TV)
• The Age of Stupid (2009)
• Ironclad (2009)
• Clash of the Titans (2010)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Pete Postlethwaite at the Internet Movie Database