Poitier, Sidney

Impact on the world

Won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1964 for 'Lilies of the Field,' becoming the first Black actor to win in that category, a moment a 10-year-old Oprah Winfrey later described watching on television and crediting as inspiration for her own ambitions; over a 50-year career he deliberately chose roles portraying dignified, morally upright Black characters, including a doctor, lawyer, and detective, at a time when Hollywood routinely offered Black actors only stereotyped parts.

Life & background

Born prematurely in Miami while his Bahamian parents were visiting to sell tomatoes, Poitier was raised in the Bahamas before moving to Florida and then New York as a teenager. After an early audition where a director, reacting to his thick Caribbean accent, told him to give up acting and find work as a dishwasher, Poitier spent months mimicking American newscasters to lose his accent before returning to land his first stage role. He went on to star in or direct more than three dozen films across a 50-year career, including 'The Defiant Ones' (1958), 'A Raisin in the Sun' (1961), and, in a single landmark year, 1967, both 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' and 'In the Heat of the Night.' His 1964 Best Actor Oscar for 'Lilies of the Field' made him the first Black actor to win the award, a milestone watched on television by a 10-year-old Oprah Winfrey in Milwaukee, who later said it gave her the thought that she too might be able to do something special. A close ally of Martin Luther King Jr., Poitier marched for civil rights and, alongside friend and fellow entertainer Harry Belafonte, personally delivered financial support to activists in the South; he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1968 and later served as the Bahamas' ambassador to Japan.

Sources

1. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Oscars.org); Encyclopædia Britannica