PETE POSTLETHWAITE: 1946 - 2011

Pete Postlethwaite was a guy who made every film he was in better. More often than not he was the best part of them. He was probably known for playing the mysterious lawyer 'Kobayashi' in The Usual Suspects, Roland Tembo in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and Friar Lawrence in Romeo + Juliet.

He also had roles in Alien 3 (1992), The Last of the Mohicans (1992), James and the Giant Peach (1996), The Shipping News (2001), and The Constant Gardener (2005).  Most recently, he played two pivotal figures in two terrific films: Maurice Fisher--the father of Cillian Murphy's character--in Inception. and 'Fergie,' the psychotic florist in The Town.

At the age of twenty-four, he left his job as a teacher, to follow his dream of being on the English stage--much to the chagrin of his parents. He began at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre, where he was colleagues with Bill Nighy, Jonathan Pryce and Julie Walters among others.

Postlethwaite tended to stay out of the spotlight, living away from the bigger cities for more rural farming areas. He was the ultimate character actor, and was rewarded in 1993's In the Name of the Father with an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Director Steven Spielberg, who cast him in two films (the aforementioned The Lost World, Amistad), once said that Postlethwaite was "the best actor in the world." The most incredible thing about his success was that he had any to begin with; seeing that he had a hard to pronounce name and the lack of movie star good looks. The dude was fun to watch though.

He passed away Sunday January 2, 2011, peacefully (albeit critically oxymoronic) from cancer.