Hollywood movie star Sydney Poitiers, who was the first notable black actor and the first black Oscar winner in the Best Actor category, died at the age of 94.
Poitiers died at his home in Los Angeles on Thursday night. When his death was announced Friday, he was emotionally mentioned by other movie stars, including Denzel Washington, U.S. President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama.
“He was a noble man and opened the door for all of us, which had been closed for years,” said two-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington, who is also an African American.
“He showed us how to reach for the stars,” Oscar winner Wuppy Goldberg said.
“I learned with great sadness this morning about the departure of Sydney Poitiers,” Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis said. Poitiers was a dual citizen of the United States and the Bahamas.
Poitiers, who was born in Miami on February 20, 1927, was nominated for an Oscar for his role in the 1958 film The Defiant Ones, but
In 1963, he became the first black Oscar winner for Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field. He has also received a Golden Globe Award for this role.
In the 1950s and 1960s, when inter-racial tensions existed in the United States, Poitiers was portrayed in a number of films directed against bigotry and stereotypes.
In 1967, he starred in three films: “To Sir, with Love,” “In the Heat of the Night,” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.”
“I have fallen the largest of the ‘Big Trees’: Sydney Poitiers,” wrote Opra Winfrey.
Biden described Poitiers as “an actor who occurs only once in a generation, [..] whose work had so much dignity, strength, and appeal that it changed the world on the big screen and beyond.
Poitiers received an Oscar in 2002 for his “special performance” in American cinema and for his “dignity, style and intelligence.”
On television, he portrayed historical figures such as South Africa’s first black president, Nelson Mandela, and the first black U.S. Supreme Court judge, Turgh Marshall.
He has received many honors, including the title of Knight of Queen Elizabeth II of Britain in 1974 and the US Presidential Freedom Medal of President Barack Obama in 2009.
“With his avant-garde roles and special talent, Sydney Poitiers embodied dignity and grace, revealing the power of movies to bring us closer. He also opened the door to a generation of actors,” Obama said.
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