Sidney Poitier, the Hollywood star and the first black man to win an Oscar for Best Actor, has died at the age of 94.
The office of the Bahamas foreign minister, Fred Mitchell, confirmed Poitier’s death to the BBC.
Poitier was a widely respected leading actor, activist, and diplomat. In 1964, he won an Academy Award for Best Actor for “Lilies of the Field.”
Poitier was born in Miami, grew up on a tomato farm in the Bahamas and moved to New York at the age of 16.
He enlisted for a short period in the army and worked a number of small jobs while studying acting, later becoming a theater and screen star.
Poitier was first nominated for an Academy Award in 1958 for his role in The Defiant Ones, and his first nomination for an Academy Award in itself is a historic achievement for a black man to be nominated for the prestigious award in the title role.
Poitier won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in “Lilies of the Field” (1963), in which he played a laborer who helps German nuns build a chapel in the desert.
picture released, Ronald Grant
Poitier was a regular on the big screen at the time of apartheid in the United States, appearing in the films “Blue Patch” in 1965, then “The Heat of the Night” the following year, followed by “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, in which he played a black man He goes to visit the family of his white fiancée.
In “The Heat of the Night,” Poitier played Virgil Tibes, a black police officer who faces racism while investigating a murder.
Poitier has directed a number of films, and last month announced a Broadway play regarding his life and career.
Amon Warman of Empire magazine told the BBC: “He was a pioneer and very influential and paved the way for many in the industry to make their own mark, including Denzel Washington, who paid him homage when he won an Oscar.”
“He addressed racism directly”
picture released, Getty Images
“Forty years I’ve been chasing Sydney and now they give him the award on the same night,” joked Denzel Washington, who won the Oscar in 2002 on the same night Poitier won an honorary Oscar.
Warman added that Poitier “tacked racism head-on” in his work but was also “very diverse”.
He said, “It really helped change the view of black actors at the time [بفوزه بجائزة الأوسكار]. He was one of the biggest stars during that time.”
George Takei, star of Star Trek, praised Poitier as “a pioneer who will mourn the loss of so many who opened the doors of Hollywood to him.”
Actress Whoopi Goldberg quoted the lyrics to To Sir With Love, the theme song from the 1967 Poitier movie with the same title. She praised him for “showing us how to get to the stars”, while actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt called him a “legend.”
American broadcaster and journalist Oprah Winfrey told Poitier in a 2000 interview that he “envisioned an African American in the film.”
“It was an enormous responsibility,” Poitier replied. “I accepted it, and I lived in a way that showed my respect for that responsibility.”
