The great American actor Sir Sidney Poitier has passed away at the age of 94. The actor was an Academy Award winner for Best Actor for his 1963 film Under God's Eye (Lillies of the Field).
He was the first African-American actor to receive the honor, 24 years after Hattie McDaniel won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1939.
The actor's success continued through the 1960s and in 1967 he had three successful films at the US Box-Office[3]: In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and To Sir, with Love, which dealt with the issue of racism. The actor was also known for his involvement in the films: Blackboard Jungle (Blackboard Jungle, 1955), I Broke My Bonds (Edge of the City, 1957), When We Broke the Chains (The Defiant Ones, 1958), A Grape in the Sun (A Raisin in the Sun, 1960) and Blind Angel (A Patch of Blue). In 1972 he made his directorial debut with Buck and the Preacher. The American Film Institute has ranked him 22nd on its list of the 25 greatest stars of all time.
In 2002, the actor received an Honorary Academy Award from the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his achievements as an artist and as a person, and in 2009 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by the President of the United States of America. Barack Obama. Since 1997, he has been an ambassador on behalf of the Bahamas (where he was born and spent his childhood), from which he is originally from in Japan.
Who was Sidney Poitier
Sidney Poitier, according to wikipedia, was born in Miami, Florida, where his Bahamian parents were visiting. Poitier grew up on Cat Island in the Caribbean and then resided in Miami, where his parents, Reginald James Poitier and Evelyn Authen, traveled to sell tomatoes and other produce from their Cat Island farm. Poitier was born two months premature and the infant's chances of survival were slim, so his parents spent three months in the U.S. to care for him. Thus the actor was automatically granted American citizenship. At the age of 10 his parents moved to Nassau in the Bahamas and at 15 his parents sent him to Miami to live with his brother. At 17, he moved to New York City where he worked as a linguist. With the help of a Jewish waiter who sat with him every night, he learned to read the newspaper. He later decided to join the US Army and when he was discharged he passed a successful audition, through which he got a job at the American Negro Theatre.
His career as an actor
Poitier began performing at the American Negro Theatre, but the audience disapproved of him. Most black actors of the time were eloquent, but Poitier did not have a musical ear, which made him unable to sing[14]. Determined to improve his acting skills and get rid of the accent that suggested his Bahamian ancestry, he spent six months studying to be successful in the theatre. His second attempt at theatre was successful and led to the lead role in the Broadway play Lysistrata (based on Aristophanes' comedy of the same name), which earned him good reviews. There he was noticed by the director of 20th Century Fox, Darryl F. Zanuck, who hired him to appear in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's No Way Out (1949) as a doctor threatened by a white man played by Richard Widmark. His performance led to more roles, most of which were notable, than those offered to other African American actors of the period. He established himself with his participation in Blackboard Jungle (1955), where he appeared as a student in an unruly class alongside Glenn Ford.
Poitier was the first African American actor to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his 1958 film When We Broke the Chains (The Defiant Ones). He was also the first actor to win the award (for Lillies of the Field in 1963). (He was preceded by Hattie McDaniel, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Gone With the Wind (1939) and James Baskett, who received an honorary Oscar for his performance in Disney's Song of the South). Despite his victory, Poitier feared that the film industry had granted him the award only to impress the crowds and to prohibit him from making bigger and more important claims in the future[15]. The following year of his win he worked very little and remained the only African-American actor in Hollywood to be successful, but the roles he was offered were indifferent.
In 1959 the actor appeared on Broadway in the play A Grape in the Sun, a play which was then successfully transferred to the big screen starring him. In 1965 he gave memorable performances in the films The Bedford Incident (Sinking the Submarine U-128) and A Patch of Blue alongside Elizabeth Hartman and Shelley Winters. 1967 proved to be his highest-grossing year with three of his films being the most popular of the year - In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and To Sir, with Love. In The Story of a Crime, he received one of his most popular roles, as police officer Virgil Tibbs. The character of Tibbs appeared in two other films starring Poitier in They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970) and The Organization (1971) that did not have the success of the original. In 1968 he wrote the screenplay for For Love of Ivy, in which he also took the lead role.
The press began to accuse Poitier of being typecast into idealized roles of African Americans who were not allowed to have sexual or personal passions and flaws, as was the case, for example, with the character he played in Guess Who's Coming Tonight. Poitier was aware of what was happening, but was wavering on the subject: on the one hand he wanted a greater variety of roles, on the other he wanted to shake off the stereotype with which the film industry presented black people. This was one of the reasons why he turned down the role of Othello in the NBC television adaptation of Shakespeare's play of the same name. In 2002 Poitier received an Honorary Oscar for his contribution to the 7th art. After Ernest Borgnine's death in 2012, he is the oldest living Academy Award winner for Best Actor...
His career as a director
Poitier directed several films. He made his directorial debut in 1972 with Buck and the Preacher, in which he co-starred with Harry Belafonte. The highest-grossing film he directed was Now... Nothing Stops Us (Stir Crazy, 1980), considered for many years to be the biggest commercial success by an African-American director. It starred Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. In 1974 he directed Harry Belafonte again, along with his friend Bill Cosby in Uptown Saturday Night. In 1975 he directed Bill Cosby again in Let`s Do It Again. The 1977 film A Piece of Action marked the beginning of his retirement from acting in order to devote himself to directing. He returned to acting in 1988 with his participation in the film Shoot to Kill.
Source: newsbeast.gr
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