Sidney Poitier, the trailblazing and iconic Black actor, director, civil rights activist, and humanitarian, has died, Bahamian Minister of Foreign Affairs announced today.
Details of his death were not immediately available.
The first Black actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor – for 1964’s Lilies of the Field – Poitier was a towering figure in Hollywood and beyond, starring in such classics as A Raisin in the Sun, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night and To Sir With Love, to name a select few, while taking on a global profile for his unceasing calls for civil rights, racial equality, and human dignity.
Born into a large Bahamian family while his parents were visiting Miami, Poitier grew up in the Bahamas but moved to America when he was 15, settling in New York City a year later. He later joined the North American Negro Theatre, and in 1950 was courted by Hollywood with a role in No Way Out. Within five years he was starring in Blackboard Jungle.
Three years after his breakthrough role in Blackboard Jungle, Poitier was co-starring with top Hollywood draws like Tony Curtis, with whom Poitier appeared in The Defiant Ones. Both Poitier and Curtis were Oscar-nominated for the 1958 film – Poitier’s first and the first nomination for a Black actor. Poitier would win the award six years later, for his indelible performance as a handyman building a chapel for a group of nuns in Lilies of the Field (1963).
Poitier’s groundbreaking early-career performances included roles in Porgy and Bess (1959), A Raisin in the Sun (1961), and, in 1965, A Patch of Blue.
From the start of his Hollywood career, Poitier’s roles – in Blackboard Jungle, A Raisin in the Sun, Lillies of the Field, and A Patch of Blue – dealt head-on with issues of race, a theme that would continue to define his career choices and set a new standard for depictions of social justice and racial equality. The actor’s performances into Sir, With Love, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night and They Call Me Mister Tibbs! were revolutionary in their presentations of Black men as strong and heroic figures of immense dignity, portrayals that would set a standard that continues to this day.
In the 1970s, Poitier’s role pivoted to comedy and expanded to directing – he took on both duties for the hugely popular films Uptown Saturday Night (1974) and Let’s Do It Again (1975). The shift to comedy directing reached an apex in 1980 with the massive hit Stir Crazy starring Richard Pryer and Gene Wilder, a movie that ushered in a decade-long public fascination with mismatched buddy comedies.
Hanky Panky, starring Wilder and Gilda Radnor, followed in 1982, Fast Forward in 1985, and, in 1990, his final directorial effort, the unsuccessful Ghost Dad starring Bill Cosby.
In 1991, he starred in the TV miniseries Separate But Equal as Thurgood Marshall, and in 1992 starred in Sneakers with Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd, and River Phoenix. Subsequent credits would include the TV movie sequel To Sir, With Love II in 1996, The Jackal in 1997, and, for his final credit, the 2001 TV film The Last Brickmaker in America.
Among his many honors and awards, Poitier received the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement in film in 2001, and in 1992 received the AFI Life Achievement Award. He was awarded the Kennedy Center Honor in 1995 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. He was made Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1974.
