Memoirs by thesps generally fall into one of two camps: shallow, meatless offerings punctuated with air kisses, or craft-obsessed monologues. Only a few — David Niven’s or Rupert Everett’s — are revelatory as well as a good read. Pete Postlethwaite’s posthumous book, completed with the help of a ghost writer following his death from cancer in January, is a bit of both.
Postlethwaite, whom Steven Spielberg famously called “the best actor in the world”, was born in 1946 and grew up in a council house in Warrington — no bathroom, but lots of love. After a stint at seminary school when he was 11, he decided his true vocation was as an actor rather than a priest. The “golly, how’s a northern lad like me got here?” attitude is laid on thick. He can also be hammy: “Our holidays were a cornucopia of quintessentially British thrills.”
Postlethwaite is at his best when he gets a character with a bit of meat. In real life he becomes a “long-haired, wild-eyed, loon-pant-wearing, beer-swilling radical” and he starts battling with the battered souls he — and his craggy, rock-hewn face — became famous for, in The Usual Suspects, In the Name of the Father, and Brassed Off.
On the personal side, he is discreet about his six-year relationship with Julie Walters, and glosses over his heavy drinking. Yet he does describe in horrifying detail a psychotic meltdown he endured in Aberystwyth in the early 1970s during a run of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
The one role he craved, though, was Lear and, when he finally landed the part in 2008, he “put every atom” of his “being into making it a success”. Sadly, this was all too prophetic. His “health began to stutter and stall like a broken-down car” and he was diagnosed with cancer shortly afterwards.