Sidney Poitier: “One of Hollywood’s Greatest Legends.”

“Sidney Poitier was the epitome of Black Dignity, Black magnificence, Black pleasure and Black energy” by “N.Y. Times” Charles M. Blow

Sidney Poitier household points assertion on his demise: “he’s our guiding gentle.”

“Sidney L. Poitier KBE, February 20, 1927 – January 6, 2022, R.I.P. Sidney Poitier was a Bahamian-American actor, movie director, activist, and ambassador. In 1964, he was the primary black particular person and first Bahamian to win the Academy Award for Finest Actor. He obtained two Academy Award nominations, ten Golden Globes nominations, two Primetime Emmy Awards nominations, six BAFTA nominations, eight Laurel nominations, and one Display Actors Guild Awards (SAG) nomination.

Poitier’s whole household lived within the Bahamas, then nonetheless a British colony, however he was born unexpectedly in Miami whereas they have been visiting for the weekend, which robotically granted him U.S. citizenship. He grew up within the Bahamas, however moved to Miami at age 15, and to New York Metropolis when he was 16. He joined the American Negro Theater, touchdown his breakthrough movie function as a highschool pupil within the movie Blackboard Jungle (1955). In 1958, Poitier starred with Tony Curtis as chained-together escaped convicts in The Defiant Ones, which obtained 9 Academy Award nominations. Each actors obtained a nomination for Finest Actor, with Poitier’s being the primary for a Black actor, in addition to a nomination for a BAFTA, which Poitier received. In 1964, he received the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Finest Actor for Lilies of the Subject (1963), taking part in a handyman serving to a bunch of German-speaking nuns construct a chapel.

Poitier additionally obtained popularity of Porgy and Bess (1959), A Raisin within the Solar (1961), and A Patch of Blue (1965). He continued to interrupt floor in three profitable 1967 movies which handled problems with race and race relations: To Sir, with Love; Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and Within the Warmth of the Night time. He obtained Golden Globe and British Academy Movie Award nominations for his efficiency within the final movie and in a ballot the following 12 months was voted the US’s prime box-office star. Starting within the Nineteen Seventies, Poitier additionally directed varied comedy movies, together with Stir Loopy (1980), starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, amongst different movies. After almost a decade away from performing, he returned to tv and movie starring in Shoot to Kill (1988) and Sneakers (1992).

Photograph credit score Alamy

Poitier was granted a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II in 1974. In 1995, he obtained the Kennedy Heart Honor. From 1997 to 2007, he was the Bahamian Ambassador to Japan. In 2009, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the best civilian honor in the USA. In 2016, he was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship for excellent lifetime achievement in movie. In 1999, he ranked twenty second amongst male actors on the “100 Years…100 Stars” listing by the American Movie Institute. He received a Grammy Award for Finest Spoken Phrase Album in 2001.In 1982, he obtained the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award and in 2000, he obtained the Display Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.[12][13] In 2002, he was given an Honorary Academy Award, in recognition of his “exceptional accomplishments as an artist and as a human being”‘. Wikipedia

Photograph credit score United Artists: Within the Warmth of the Night time