Farewell to Sidney Poitier, first African American actor to win an Oscar

The great actor Sidney Poitier, a Hollywood legend, one of the first highly successful African American actors and the first to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, passed away on Jan. 6 in Los Angeles at the age of 94. Born in Miami on February 20, 1927, to Reginald James Poitier and Evelyn Outten, merchants originally from the Bahamas, Sidney spent his childhood in the Caribbean archipelago and then returned, following his family, to Miami at the age of 15. In 1943 he enlisted in the army but left it soon after to study at the American Negro Theater (ANT) in Harlem: thanks to his studies, he was able to make his debut in 1947 in Sepia Cinderella (although uncredited) and get his first major part in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1950 film White Man, You Will Live!

It was with 1955’s The Seed of Violence, however, that he established himself as one of the best actors of his generation, playing the role of student Gregory W. Miller, so much so that just three years later, at the age of twenty-nine, for his part in Stanley Kramer’s The Mud Wall he got his first nomination for best leading actor (without winning it, but still earning a BAFTA). The coveted statuette would come in 1964: Sidney Poitier was awarded best actor in a leading role for his portrayal of black laborer Homer Smith in Ralph Nelson’s 1963 film The Lilies of the Field. He was the first African American actor to win the award.

In the following years he played other unforgettable roles such asInspector Tibbs or doctor John Prentice in his most famous film, 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (for which, however, he did not win awards). For Poitier also a few directorial films in the 1970s: Don’t Preach...Shoot!, Thank You for that Hot December, Uptown Saturday Night, Again and Always, A Piece of the Action, Nobody Can Stop Us, Hanky Panky, Dance - Want to Succeed, and Ghost Dad. Sidney Poitier retired from the stage after 2001, the year of his last role, for the TV movie The Last Brickmaker. In 2002 he was awarded the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement.

In addition to the two Oscars, he received several Golden Globe nominations, never winning, but winning the Golden Globe for Lifetime Achievement in 1982 and the Henrietta Award for Best Actor in the World in 1969. His palmares also include a Silver Bear for Best Actor for The Wall of Mud, the National Board of Review’s Lifetime Achievement Award (1994), and the BAFTA Lifetime Achievement Award (in 2006).

Farewell to Sidney Poitier, first African American actor to win an Oscar

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