RIP: Pete Postlethwaite

JAN 3, 2011 - Oscar-nominated British actor Pete Postlethwaite is dead, Reuters reported today. He was 64. He died in hospital in Shropshire, western England, yesterday, after suffering from cancer.

“He had been unwell off and on for around two years and not worked as frequently as normal during the past year because of the cancer and its side effects,” a spokesman said.

Postlethwaite had been described by director Steven Spielberg as “probably the best actor in the world today”. The two worked together on the films The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Amistad.

He was nominated for an Oscar for his role in In the Name of the Father, the 1993 film about the wrongful convictions of the so-called Guildford Four for an Irish Republican Army bombing.

Other notable film credits included Brassed Off, The Usual Suspects and Inception, while on stage he played the lead in “King Lear” in 2008 at Liverpool’s Everyman, the northern English theatre where he began his career. He was last seen in The Town.