In all the tributes to Pete Postlethwaite, who died before his time at 64, I remember an interview conducted with the man that was signal in assessing the man. The most salient revelation was that he was proud never to have been on the dole. It was odd to me because if I needed to take unemployment benefit it wouldn’t be a shaming action. Maybe I’ve had certain advantages that many of Postlethwaite’s peers did not possess, that maybe if one is not honestly employed, it leads to a sense of worthlessness, maybe not unlike that portrayed by the redundant steel workers in The Full Monty. To take the proffered handout and be back in the DFSS time and again would be for me a fact of life that I did not have a job. To have not needed to have done so I do not regard as an achievement, just as I understand that others are not as lucky as myself. Postlethwaite though probably didn’t wish to be a burden to anyone, rather than to be superior. This is illustrated by his repeated feigning of Steven Spielberg’s quote after Jurassic Park: The Lost World that he was “probably the best actor in the world.” On other occasions he dismissed it as ‘just one man’s opinion’ or that the director made him sound like a lager advert. In this Q & A that has remained with me, his humility came out again when reminded of it, quipping that Spielberg actually said “Pete Postlethwaite thinks he’s probably the best actor in the world.” Of course, Postlethwaite was not arrogant, but in expressing his modesty in disguise as its opposite shows that it was genuine. A truly arrogant person would not have made that statement in the first place. When watching The Town or Inception last year, he was utterly believable in that he immersed himself in the character – you didn’t think that’s him. You never thought he was on the way out (although the character for Inception was). He still had so much to offer.