Highly recognized and respected British actor Pete Postlethwaite passed away yesterday after a lengthy battle with cancer.

Postlethwaite wasn’t necessarily the best-known actor and many likely wouldn’t even recognize him by name, but when anyone who’s seen a few movies lays eyes on him, they know who they’re looking at.

The actor’s career began in the ’70s with performances on both the stage and screen. He continued to perform in movies and in stage productions throughout his career, but it was in the 1990s that he truly made his mark on Hollywood and made his talents known to the entire planet.

Just in that decade alone, Postlethwaite appeared in movies like Alien 3, The Last of the Mohicans, In the Name of the Father (which gave him his first and only Academy Award nomination), The Usual Suspects (as the infamous Kobayashi), James and the Giant Peach, Dragonheart, Romeo + Juliet, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and Amistad. These performances solidified him as one of the best character actors in the business and proved that he could be great on many different levels.

Since then he’s appeared in The Constant Gardener, Æon Flux, The Omen, and very recently in Clash of the Titans, Inception, and The Town.

Legendary director Steven Spielberg once said of Pete Postlethwaite that he was “probably the best actor in the world today,” and sadly, that actor has left us far too soon.

Pete Postlethwaite
1946 — 2011

[Source: The Independent]