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With features seemingly hewn out of stone actor Pete Postlethwaite was born to be a character actor. But out of this distinctive facial canvas came a potent acting talent that could bend those features to playing almost any role with an understated dignity.

Such was this emotive quality to his craft that his turn as the band leader in a Northern mining town fa... [+]

With features seemingly hewn out of stone actor Pete Postlethwaite was born to be a character actor. But out of this distinctive facial canvas came a potent acting talent that could bend those features to playing almost any role with an understated dignity.

Such was this emotive quality to his craft that his turn as the band leader in a Northern mining town facing pit closure in Brassed Off (1996) was credited by former UK Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott as actively influencing government policy at the time.

Born in Warrington in Cheshire, Postlethwaite first trained to be a teacher before training at the Bristol Old Vic theatre school and working his apprenticeship at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre during its 1970s heyday. His contemporaries at the Everyman included future talents like Bill Nighy, Jonathan Pryce, Julie Walters and Antony Sher.

Postlethwaite became best known on screen for two deeply humane performances in the late 1980s and early 1990s. First as the abusive father who somehow loved his children in Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and later as the wrongly imprisoned IRA suspect Patrick "Guiseppe" Conlon in In the Name of the Father (1993).

Firmly placing his name on the lists of casting agents on both sides of the Atlantic he was then just as likely to turn up in a Hollywood blockbuster as he was in a low budget British film or on television. Memorable big budget outings included The Usual Suspects (1995) and Jurassic Park 2: The Lost World (1997). Back home though he could turn up on BBC period dramas like Martin Chuzzlewit (1994) or the environmental documentary The Age of Stupid (2009). [-]