Actor Sidney Poitier, the groundbreaking actor whose many credits included becoming the first Black male to win the Academy Award for best actor, has died at age 94.
His death was first reported in news outlets in the Bahamas, with Eyewitness News Bahamas and other outlets saying it had been confirmed by Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell. Details were not immediately available. Poitier had ties to the ministry, having served as the Bahamas’ ambassador to Japan from 1997 to 2007.
Poitier’s family was Bahamian, but he was born when they were visiting Miami in 1927 and thus had American citizenship. His early breakout roles in films included “Blackboard Jungle” in 1955 and “The Defiant Ones” in 1958. He won the best actor Oscar for his role in the 1963 film “Lilies of the Field,” and in 1967 starred in a trio of blockbusters: “In the Heat of the Night,” “To Sir, With Love” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.”
A 2021 profile in Variety described him as “a living legend who changed Hollywood.” The article describes the significance of Poitier’s early career: “diversity was nearly non-existent when Poitier made his film debut in the 1950 ‘No Way Out.’ There had been other Black actors in lead film roles, including James Edwards and Harry Belafonte, but they were extremely rare. And Poitier captured the public imagination like no one before him, with his soft but powerful voice (with that slight, unidentifiable accent from the Bahamas) and, crucially, his integrity.”
Poitier continued working as an actor through the 1990s and along the way directed nine films, including the comedy “Stir Crazy” with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. Other honors include two Golden Globe wins; a Grammy for best spoken-word album (2001′s “The Measure of a Man”), an American Film Institute Life Achievement Award, being named a Kennedy Center honoree, a British knighthood and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In 2002 he received an honorary Oscar; presenter Denzel Washington said that such awards are given “sometimes for a body of work, sometimes for work done to better the industry, sometimes for the influence created among other filmmakers around the world. This year they honor a man who qualifies in all three areas.”
“Before Sidney, African-American actors had to take supporting roles in major studio films, that were easy to cut out in certain parts of the country,” said Washington. “But you couldn’t cut Sidney Poitier out of a Sidney Poitier picture. He was the reason the movie got made — the first solo, above-the-title, African-American movie star.”
Accepting the award, Poitier said “no route had been established for where I was hoping to go, no pathway left in evidence for me to trace, no custom for me to follow.” He thanked “a handful of visionary American filmmakers, directors, writers and producers,” saying that “each with a strong sense of citizenship responsibility to the times in which they lived; each unafraid to permit their art to reflect their views and values, ethical and moral, and moreover, acknowledge them as their own. They knew the odds that stood against them and their efforts were overwhelming and likely could have proven too high to overcome. Still those filmmakers persevered, speaking through their art to the best in all of us. And I’ve benefited from their effort. The industry benefited from their effort. America benefited from their effort. And in ways large and small the world has also benefited from their effort.”
In addition to carefully choosing roles that challenged stereotypes, Poitier was a supporter of the civil rights movement, and co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Foundation with fellow entertainer and activist Harry Belafonte. He faced some criticism for sticking to idealized roles, though that reflected his willingness to turn down work if he thought it would perpetuate harmful portrayals of Blacks.
“Almost all the job opportunities were reflective of the stereotypical perception of Blacks that had infected the whole consciousness of the country,” he recalled, quoted by The Associated Press. “I came with an inability to do those things. It just wasn’t in me. I had chosen to use my work as a reflection of my values.”
According to an Associated Press report on his death, he “had a hard time finding housing in Los Angeles and was followed by the Ku Klux Klan when he visited Mississippi in 1964, not long after three civil rights workers had been murdered there. In interviews, journalists often ignored his work and asked him instead about race and current events.”
“I am an artist, man, American, contemporary,” he snapped during a 1967 press conference, according to the AP story. “I am an awful lot of things, so I wish you would pay me the respect due.”
Though Poitier had few connections to Alabama, his first wife, Juanita Hardy, was from in Bridgeport, Ala. The couple had four daughters before divorcing in 1965.