Remembering the best actor in the world

As I was intermittently paying attention to this year's Academy Awards (Billy, the Borscht Belt called - they want their jokes back), I did happen to catch the segment of the show they do each year honoring people in the business, mostly actors, who've passed away.

I call it the Cavalcade Of Dead Stars. The Academy calls it In Memoriam.

Watching the familiar names and faces go by, I was waiting for one actor's name in particular who died last year: Pete Postlethwaite. Come to find out since he passed away on January 2, 2011, he was actually honored in last year's on-air cavalcade.

Postlethwaite was one of my favorite actors of all time. Apparently I was in good company - Spielberg called him "the best actor in the world."

His craggy face and nose that'd been broken several times in bar brawls all but insured he was never going to compete with more classically good looking actors for lead roles.

But as he proved time after time, role after role, you don't have to be the lead to be unforgettable.

Most people remember him from his Oscar-winning performance along with Daniel Day Lewis In The Name Of The Father.

Hard to believe it was his only Oscar.

He lent an air of credibility and realism to popcorn fare like The Lost World. And he riveted my attention with his unshakable confidence mixed with just a hint of threat as conduit to Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects.

My favorite performance though was one of his last - Irish mobster, and florist, Fergie Colm in the Ben Affleck directed film The Town. Menacing, fearless, understated and terrifying, the scene where he's pruning roses while he tells Affleck how he got his mother hooked on drugs before she killed herself is a master class in acting.

I'm glad the Academy didn't inadvertently leave him out of the cavalcade this year. It would've been almost as criminal as nominating him for just one Oscar after a lifetime of Oscar-worthy performances.