Virtually unknown in America until his Oscar-nominated role in the 1993 film In The Name of the Father, the British actor died Jan. 2 after a long battle with cancer. Fresh Air remembers him with highlights from a 1997 interview.
Postlethwaite played the incarcerated father of Gerry Conlon in "In the Name of the Father." Currently he can be seen in the new film "The Lost World," Steven Speilberg's sequel to "Jurassic Park," and "Brassed Off" a film about how members of a brass band respond to the economic decline of a small mining community in Yorkshire, England.