Postlethwaite was made an OBE in 2004 Oscar-nominated British actor Pete Postlethwaite has died at the age of 64, a spokesman has announced.
Journalist and friend Andrew Richardson said Postlethwaite, who was made an OBE in 2004, died peacefully in hospital in Shropshire after a lengthy illness.
In 1994, he was nominated for an Oscar for In The Name of the Father.
Actor Bill Nighy, who performed with Postlethwaite at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre in the 1970s, paid tribute to “a rare and remarkable man”.
“I was honoured by his friendship – he is irreplaceable,” Nighy added.
Mr Richardson said the actor, who also starred in films including The Usual Suspects and Brassed Off, had carried on working in recent months despite receiving treatment for cancer.
He is survived by his wife and two children.
Postlethwaite, who lived near the Welsh border in Shropshire, was being treated at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.
He recently told the Shropshire Star that staff there had been “wonderful and I am grateful to them”.
The actor, who was born in Warrington, Cheshire, began his career at the Everyman working with Nighy and other future stars including Julie Walters and Alan Bleasdale.
He returned to the Everyman in 2008 to play the lead in King Lear, a role he had always wanted to take on, and said afterwards the theatre had been “where I started really, or where I realised that being an actor wasn’t just a flippant job”.
He starred alongside his friend Daniel Day-Lewis in In The Name of the Father, about the wrongful convictions that followed the IRA’s Guildford pub bombings.
His role as Giuseppe Conlon earned him a best supporting actor Oscar nod. He and Day-Lewis had previously worked together in repertory theatre during the 1970s.
Postlethwaite was once described by director Steven Spielberg, whom he worked with in films including The Lost World: Jurassic Park, as “the best actor in the world”.
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