Pete Postlethwaite Dead At 64
This guy was a good actor.
I hadn't heard a thing about this until I sat down and scanned the net this morning. He apparently passed over the weekend from cancer at the age of 64.
It was said he avoided the spotlight.
A lot of you might find his last name tricky, much less immediately recognize it. Understandable. He wasn't a star.
He was a very, very good character actor. The best thing one can be in Hollywood.
So who was he exactly?
I first saw him in the mid 90's, when I fell in love with Bryan Singer's "The Usual Suspects".
My name is Mr. Kobayashi. I work for Keyser Soze.
He was the calm, creepy, lawyer/messenger boy for the film's villain. And he played the role so coolly. Always impeccably dressed and mannered. Every line delivered with a relaxed, yet precise and simple manner.
He was foreign to be sure, put you couldn't quite put your finger on it.
Not to throw a spoiler out, but the mere, simple, matter-of-fact glance he gives Kevin Spacey in the car at the film's end was genius.
Another amazing film I didn't see until awhile after it's release was "In the Name of the Father". The story of the wrongly accused, wrongly imprisoned Gerry Conlon, a young man from Belfast living in London and thought to be behind a fatal IRA bombing.
Postlethwaite portrayed his father, and would go on to receive a best supporting Oscar nomination.
Yes, a character actor on screen with Daniel Day Lewis, and he gets the Oscar nod.
Wow.
I also remember him as a total bad-ass soldier of fortune in one of the "Jurassic Park" sequels.
I last saw him as the earth-father of Perseus in the "Clash of The Titans" remake last year.
Looking at all that, as an actor he was impressive: a small, slight, large-nosed, narrow-eyed, bony man.
And he was every bit as believable as a calm, cool, foreboding messenger of Satan ("Suspects"), as an elderly, humble, frightened martyr-father who loved his troubled son above all else ("Father"), and as a tough, no nonsense, dinosaur hunter who could splinter your nose with a single blow (Park").
And I don't believe he ever once appeared in a romantic comedy.
For that alone I'll miss the hell out of him.