Pete Postlethwaite is one of the finest actors that this country has ever produced as he enjoyed success in TV, film and theatre in his thirty five year career.
After training as to be an actor at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School it was on the stage where he kicked off his career as performed at the Manchester Royal Exchange, the Old Vic, and the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in the eighties.
He picked up TV and film roles early in his career with the likes of the Muscle Market for the BBC and as well as movies The Duellists and Fords on Water.
But it was to be A Private Function in 1984 that was to be his first movie performance of note, starring alongside Maggie Smith and Michael Palin.
After leaving the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1987 he focused on his film career and it was Distant Voices, Still Lives that really showed off his talent.
He took on the role of an alcoholic father in the Terrence Davis directed feature - a part that brought his critical acclaim as well as made his name.
He varied his roles in the coming years moving from the likes of Hamlet, in which he starred alongside Mel Gibson and Glenn Close to make his first blockbuster movie in the form of Alien 3.
But the role that he will forever be synonymous with will be his performance in In The Name of the Father, which saw him star alongside Daniel Day Lewis.
Directed by Jim Sheridan the movie follows the story of Gerry Conlon, purported ringleader of the Guildford Four, a group of three Irishmen and one English woman wrongly imprisoned for the 1974 IRA bombing of a pub in Guildford, England, that left five people dead.
Conlon's father Guiseppe was subsequently imprisoned along with six other Conlon relatives who became known as the Maguire Seven.
For his performance Postlethwaite was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, losing out to Tommy-Lee Jones for The Fugitive.
Throughout the nineties he appeared in movies such as The Usual Suspects, Dragonheart, Romeo & Juliet and The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
And while he continued to make Hollywood movies he also worked in British film with the likes of Brassed Off.
2010 was a busy year for the actor as he stared in Solomon Kane, Clash of the Titans, Inception and The Town.
He had already completed work on Killing Bono - which will be released in April.
The actor had been suffering from cancer and passed away at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital on 2 January.
He is survived by his wife Jacqueline and two children William, born 1989, and Lily, born in 1996.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw