Pete Postlethwaite

Peter William "Pete" Postlethwaite (OBE), 16 February 1946 – 2 January 2011, was an English stage, film and television actor.

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 "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, Inception, and in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet.

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 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. Postlethwaite died from cancer on 2 January 2011.