Pete Postlethwaite

Darling, you were dreadful! The best and worst big-screen performances of all time

What makes cinema acting great – or awful? As Harry Styles raises eyebrows in two new films, our film critics name the portrayals that really blew them away

Guardian film critics

23, Sep, 2022 @5:00 AM

'I'm raising demons': Billy Postlethwaite on playing Macbeth in his dad's shadow

He grew up listening to his father Pete reciting Shakespeare over breakfast. Now Billy Postlethwaite is taking on the part that obsessed them both: Macbeth

Chris Wiegand

06, Mar, 2019 @6:00 AM

Distant Voices, Still Lives review – vividly present autobiographical masterpiece

Pete Postlethwaite and Freda Dowie shine in Terence Davies’s remarkable 1988 portrait of a working-class Liverpool family that is as gripping as any thriller

Peter Bradshaw

30, Aug, 2018 @1:38 PM

How we made Brassed Off

‘I spent months learning the flugelhorn – and I didn’t even have to play it’

Interviews by Jack Watkins

24, Apr, 2017 @2:30 PM

Michael Sheen, Passengers and why Hollywood's hottest leads need a quirky Brit

How do you make Tom Cruise seem more heroic? Add Simon Pegg. Need Chris Pratt to be more macho? Add Michael Sheen. Why are Britain’s character actors becoming kooky foils to Hollywood smoothies?

Ryan Gilbey

07, Dec, 2016 @6:36 PM

King Lear, past and present – in pictures

Shakespeare’s tragic monarch remains one of the most demanding roles in theatre. Revisit the key portrayals on stage and screen, from Olivier and Scofield to Jonathan Pryce and Geoffrey Rush

28, Jun, 2016 @12:12 PM

Julie Walters: ‘People like me wouldn't get a chance today'

She was a working-class kid who got her break in the revolutionary 1970s theatre scene. The grande dame of British acting sounds off to Simon Hattenstone about privilege, politics and her drinking days

Simon Hattenstone

24, Jan, 2015 @7:00 AM

The battle between capital and labour is still raging on film | Zoe Williams

Zoe Williams: Pride, Billy Elliott and Brassed Off see the crushing of unions for what it was – a new phase in a war that never really went away

Zoe Williams

22, Sep, 2014 @5:00 AM

Letters: Brassed off at the hymns of praise to Thatcher

Letters: Pete Postlethwaite's peroration on the enormous ramifications of the destruction of our mining communities should surely be viewed throughout the land

12, Apr, 2013 @7:59 PM

Distant Voices, Still Lives and A Zed and Two Noughts: watch the double bill

The Guardian's season of British cult classics continues with Distant Voices, Still Lives and A Zed and Two Noughts - watch the double bill

Andrew Pulver

16, Nov, 2012 @10:00 AM

British cult classics double bill: Distant Voices, Still Lives and A Zed & Two Noughts - video

Peter Bradshaw introduces our British cult classics double bill, with Terence Davies' post-war kitchen sink drama offering a cautious how'd-you-do to Peter Greenaways flight-of-fancy art movie

Peter Bradshaw and Henry Barnes

16, Nov, 2012 @9:00 AM