Acting as all our fathers

AUTOBIOGRAPHY: A Spectacle of DustBy Pete Postlethwaite Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 288pp. £20

PETE POSTLETHWAITE, the granite-featured actor who died in January of this year, was once famously described as “the best actor in the world” by Steven Spielberg. For a man born to solidly working class Catholic stock in Warrington in the north of England this heady accolade was both extraordinary and unexpected. Indeed, his slow rise to become one of the most recognizable and iconic British actors of his generation is surprising for a number of reasons, not least of which was the fact that he had, as the principle of the Bristol Old Vic theatre school had once assured him, “a face like a fucking stone archway”. However it was the very hardness and violence of his features coupled with the sensitivity and depth which he brought to his roles that made him such a compelling performer and so beloved to a generation of theatre and cinema goers.

That he should have become an actor at all seems highly improbable. For a north of England lad like himself, born to a labouring class and with no history of arts involvement in his family, a career as an actor must have seemed remote or unattainable. Indeed, early in his life it was not the theatre that had gripped him but a deep and sincerely held religious belief. It was this devotion that led him to join a seminary at the tender age of 11, though this pious interlude lasted for only three years. From there, after a short-lived career as a PE teacher, he ended up at acting school and though it may seem like a great leap to go from training for the priesthood to treading the boards, for Postlethwaite both decisions came from a similar place, as both paths involved acts of faith: “My journey into the theatre mirrored my journey into the seminary,’’ he writes. “I loved being with others who shared a common belief and who wanted to improve things and make sense of the world around us.’’

For him acting was a vocation and the theatre a place of divine revelation, and he believed in both fully and feverishly, and understood them to have the power to transform both the individual and society. Indeed it is clear from the book that Postlethwaite pursued his career with a sort of religious fervour. This is not to suggest that he led an ascetic life. Far from it. Throughout his career he had been both socially hedonistic and wildly dedicated to his craft, driving himself to extremes in both his personal and his professional endeavours.

The book is littered with descriptions of his wild excess, his drug and drink binges, his crashing of cars and flirtations with madness. Indeed the fact that he survived for as long as he did is another of the great Postlethwaite mysteries. At one point, while performing a summer season in Aberystwyth with a company that included the likes of his then girlfriend Julie Walters and Bill Nighy, Postlethwaite actually tipped himself over into a sort of drug-addled lunacy and went walkabout in the Welsh hills for four days. The events are recounted here rather hilariously and read at times like a cross between Withnail and I and I, An Actor.Postlethwaite's own explanation for his wig-out in north Wales avoids blaming it on the industrial quantities of dope and drink he was ingesting at the time but rather on the fact that he was rehearsing the part of McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: "(the play) wasnt the best script for somebody to deal with while suffering a seismic emotional collapse. I mean, Cuckoo's Nest,'' he explains, " it's a mind fuck.''

Postlethwaite spent the final months of his life working on this autobiography, along with ghostwriter Andy Richardson, and the results could at best be described as breezy or competent. We get a very detailed overview of the man’s career and his heroic work ethic but much less of his personal life. Indeed, one comes away from reading this book with very little sense of the private man. His relationship with Julie Walters for instance is glossed over rather than explored, as is his troubling relationship with drink and even the description of his work at times degenerates into a tedious list of plays performed or films executed.

It is only in the very moving final chapter, where he discusses his illness and its effects on his family, that we get a real portrait of this uniquely talented and insightful man and if this makes the book a little disappointing, well, there is always the work he has left behind – and what beautiful work it is.

Postlethwaite has left us some stunning film performances across a wide range of genres but he will probably be best remembered for his achingly sensitive portrayals of father figures. From his terrifying turn as the violent patriarch in Terence Davies's Distant Voices, Still Livesto the saintly Giuseppe Conlon in In the Name of the Father(for which he was nominated for an Oscar), to the stoically dignified Danny in Brassed Off,there was something inspired in the way he brought to these broken, flawed or monstrous characters a depth and a uniqueness that nevertheless seemed to remind us of all our fathers. He seemed to channel a sort of broken dignity into these roles that had the power to very simply communicate the pain and contradictions, the very profane sanctity of fatherhood itself and that still has the power to stun an audience. That, I think, is legacy enough.

Mark O Halloran is a writer and actor. He is currently appearing in Noel Cowards Hay Fever at the Gate theatre. His new play TRADE will premiere at the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival in the autumn