In Their Own Words

It was at the [Liverpool Everyman Theatre] in the late Sixties and early Seventies that I realised there was a logic to being an actor. That it wasn't just farting about. The policy at that time was to do things that were only to do with the community in which it was based. So if you were doing King Lear, or whatever, you'd do it in such a way that it was relative to a building site in Liverpool. I followed the miners' strike; I followed the Guildford Four. After reading Gerry Conlon's book I wanted to do the film [In the Name of the Father, with Daniel Day-Lewis] so much that I went to the interview completely in character as Giuseppe and stayed in character all the way through the interview - Belfast accent, old suit from a thrift shop...


I like playing characters that are complex, that are intriguing, that come from leftfield, that do things that are unexpected. I don't like people who just follow one line and that's it – that's why I could never be in a sitcom, I don't think. They're not intriguing enough for me.

Pete Postlethwaite, British Actor, 1946-2011
Read his obituary in The Guardian here