Pete Postlethwaite

Pete Postlethwaite

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Pete Postlethwaite OBE (7.2.1946 - 2.1.2011)
Pete Postlethwaite was a British actor, who worked in stage, film and television, to great acclaim. He was highly revered within his industry and earned himself a number of awards in his time as an actor. Steven Spielberg once referred to him as 'the greatest actor in the world' after they worked together on Jurassic Park: The Lost World.

Childhood: Pete Postlethwaite was born to William and Mary Postlethwaite in Warrington, Lancashire. His family was Roman Catholic and working class. Postlethwaite trained to be a teacher at St. Mary's College, Strawberry Hill. He then went on to teach drama at Loreto College, Manchester, before training to be an actor at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

Acting Career: Pete Postlethwaite's career started at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre. His fellow colleagues at that time included Jonathan Pryce Bill Nighy, Julie Walters and Anthony Sher.

In 1981, Pete Postlethwaite landed the leading role in The Muscle Market, which was a spin-off of Boys from the Blackstuff. The series also starred Alison Steadman.

Postlethwaite then went on to land a few smaller parts in TV series such as the Professionals (starring Martin Shaw). His film success started with 1988's Distant Voices, Still Lives. Postlethwaite's film work was sparse for a few years but in 1993, he earned himself an Oscar nomination for his role in In The Name of the Father. The film also starred Daniel Day Lewis and Emma Thompson.

One of Postlethwaite's best-known film roles was playing the mysterious lawyer Mr. Kobayashi in The Usual Suspects, alongside Stephen Baldwin, Gabriel Byrne, Benicio del Toro and Kevin Spacey.

He then went on to feature in a number of successful mainstream films, including Alien 3 (starring Sigourney Weaver), Amistad (with Anthony Hopkins), Brassed Off (featuring Ewan McGregor) and The Shipping News with Julianne Moore and Judi Dench. Pete Postlethwaite then landed a role in the critically acclaimed film The Constant Gardener, along with Rachel Weisz and Ralph Fiennes.

In 2010, Pete Postlethwaite could be seen in the blockbuster Inception, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard and Ellen Page.

The author Terry Pratchett has stated that he always imagined his Discworld character as a 'younger, slightly bulkier version of Pete Postlethwaite.'

Among Postlethwaite's other notable roles were playing the antagonist Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill in the ITV series Sharpe, which starred Sean Bean. The two actors then went on to work together again in When Saturday Comes.

In 2008, Postlethwaite returned to the Liverpool Everyman Theatre, where his career began, appearing in a production of King Lear. The following year, he featured in The Age of Stupid, which focused on the topic of climate change. It was a topic close to his heart as he had recently installed a wind turbine in his own garden.

In 2004, Pete Postlethwaite received an OBE in the New Year's Honours List.

Personal Life: In 2003, Pete Postlethwaite married his wife Jackie Morrish, a former BBC producer. They have two children together, William John (b.1999) and Lily Kathleen (b. 1992).

Pete Postlethwaite was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1990 and had to have a testicle removed. In 2011, he died from cancer, at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.



Biography by Contactmusic.com

Killing Bono Trailer


Neil McCormick always had a dream of becoming a rock n' roll star. Having auditioned to join a band at school, Neil found himself losing out and his best friend Paul being picked as the lead singer of the hottest band in Dublin The Hype. Feeling he would've been the better person for the job, Neil sets up the band 'Shook Up' with his brother Ivan - their most important aim: to be more successful than The Hype.

Continue: Killing Bono Trailer

The Town Trailer


Doug Macray is a professional thief. His gang are one of the best and most successful of their kind. Bank robberies is their general area of interest and in all the years they've been in the business they've kept a clean record and never been caught, part of their success is down to the lack of attachments. Their latest heist is at a bank where they end up taking the bank manager called Claire hostage. Eventually the robbers let the woman go but she's left unnerved by her experience. In the days following her experience, she meets a man called Doug, he seems unassuming and friendly and she's taken in by his seemingly charming personality. Their relationship begins to grow but Claire is unaware of Doug's dark side, he was one of the men who took Claire hostage.

Continue: The Town Trailer

Inception Review


Essential
Nolan pulls us into another fiendishly entertaining scenario, engaging our brains while taking us on a thrilling ride. And while the mind-bending story might not be as cerebral as it seems, it completely envelops us.

Cobb (DiCaprio) invades people's dreams for a living, stealing ideas with the help of his sidekick Arthur (Gordon-Levitt). But a new client (Watanabe) wants him to try inception instead: implanting an idea in the mind of media heir Fischer (Murphy). So Cobb hires a new architect (Page) and two other skilled experts (Hardy and Rao) to create an elaborately layered dreamworld for the reverse heist. The problem is that Cobb's wife (Cotillard) is lurking in this alternate reality and could bring the whole plan crashing down around them.

Continue reading: Inception Review

Clash Of The Titans Review


Good
The studio clearly couldn't resist the chance to digitally revisit the creatures so memorably animated by Ray Harryhausen in the 1981 original. The result is an unnecessary remake that's loud, chaotic and mildly entertaining.

Perseus (Worthington) is a demigod who has been raised by humans and now finds himself at the centre of a war between man and the gods Zeus (Neeson), Hades (Fiennes) and Poseidon (a blink-and-you'll-miss-him Danny Huston). Accompanied by a handful of plucky warriors from Argos (including Mikkelsen, Cunningham, Hoult and Matheson) and his spirit-guide Io (Arterton), he heads off to find the secret to defeat Hades' feared Kraken so he can save Princess Andromeda (Davalos).

Continue reading: Clash Of The Titans Review

Clash Of The Titans Trailer


Watch the trailer for Clash Of The Titans.

Continue: Clash Of The Titans Trailer

Between Strangers Review


Very Good
Between Strangers? Hmmm, sounds like a softcore porn movie. Turns out it's a weepy melodrama starring a generation-bounding collection of movie stars.

Ever since Short Cuts won accolades, we get a yearly version of this movie, a sometimes thoughtful collection of stories, none large enough to stand alone as a feature film, some to slight to merit any attention at all. Between Strangers mitigates this problem by focusing on the stories of three women, all wrestling with past mistakes or old regrets.

Continue reading: Between Strangers Review

The Shipping News Review


OK
Kevin Spacey is the Spock of serious actors. He's dependable, methodical, passionless, a huge fan of saying everything by saying nothing at all. He tends to gravitate towards characters hiding some sort of fiery secret pain by denying themselves exterior displays of emotion or excitement. In certain films, this really works, thus earning Spacey a reputation as on of Hollywood's best working actors. In The Shipping News however, it bombs badly.

It's not really Spacey's fault, it's just the script. Spacey is Quoyle, a newly single father, after his slutty whore of a wife (Cate Blanchett) is killed while selling their daughter on the black market to earn spending cash for her latest biker boyfriend. Quoyle spends his time grieving and in denial and soon decides to follow a long lost aunt to the homeland of his family in Newfoundland. There, he stumbles into a job as the shipping news reporter for the local newspaper.

Continue reading: The Shipping News Review

Animal Farm (1999) Review


Very Good
The dark side of Babe. Impressive attempt at recreating Orwell's classic book for TV, but it's lacking a few components, and has a really abrupt and unfulfilling ending. Keeps your attention for the full two hours, though, and worth a look, especially for Orwell fans who don't mind a little bastardization. Check out also the reissued 1954 version of the film.

Dark Water Review


Zero
I've just walked out in the middle of "Dark Water"after a noxious hour of prosaically PG-13, hackneyed horror-flick cliches.

Torpid, trite and not the least bit scary -- just unrelen=tinglyunpleasant -- the first 45 minutes of the movie only came to life in twoscenes involving the messy divorce of miserable single mom Jennifer Connelly(proving Oscars don't bring talented actresses good roles). She subsequentlymoves into a drab, creepy cinderblock slum with her sad-eyed daughter (ArielGade), even though it's made very clear that there's nothing keeping herfrom finding a nicer place in the suburbs.

Soon the kid has an "imaginary friend" she won'ttalk about, their ceiling is dripping gooey black liquid from an abandoned(and eerily flooded) apartment upstairs, and the building's greasy manager(John C. Reilly) and bug-eyed, hollow-cheeked building superintendent (PetePostlethwaite) both seem to be hiding something sinister.

Director Walter Salles (the Brazilian behind "TheMotorcycle Diaries," making his inauspicious Hollywood debut) dragsout these routine, oppressively glum establishing scenes to a mind-numbingdegree. (If this apartment building is spooky enough to justify its ownominous soundtrack theme from the moment mom and daughter arrive, how comeConnelly isn't astute enough to realize something's amiss, even if shecan't hear the music?)

Continue reading: Dark Water Review

Pete Postlethwaite

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Pete Postlethwaite

Date of birth

7th February, 1946

Date of death

2nd January, 2011

Occupation

Actor

Sex

Male

Height

1.75


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Pete Postlethwaite Movies

Killing Bono Trailer

Killing Bono Trailer

Neil McCormick always had a dream of becoming a rock n' roll star. Having auditioned...

The Town Trailer

The Town Trailer

Doug Macray is a professional thief. His gang are one of the best and most...

Inception Movie Review

Inception Movie Review

Nolan pulls us into another fiendishly entertaining scenario, engaging our brains while taking us on...

Clash Of The Titans Movie Review

Clash Of The Titans Movie Review

The studio clearly couldn't resist the chance to digitally revisit the creatures so memorably animated...

Advertisement
Clash Of The Titans Trailer

Clash Of The Titans Trailer

Watch the trailer for Clash Of The Titans.Perseus lives his life like any other man...

The Shipping News Movie Review

The Shipping News Movie Review

Kevin Spacey is the Spock of serious actors. He's dependable, methodical, passionless, a huge...

Dark Water Movie Review

Dark Water Movie Review

I've just walked out in the middle of "Dark Water"after a noxious hour of prosaically...

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