Sidney Poitier, the first black actor to win the Oscar for Best Actor and Symbol of Racial Integration in the United States in the 1960s, died yesterday at the age of 94. The announcement of his death came from the Bahamian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for which Poitier had been a lifelong ambassador since 1997. He won the Oscar for The Lilies of the Valley in 1963, although his film best known was Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), where he played the perfect son-in-law who uncovered the racist prejudices of a middle-class American couple played by Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.
Poitier also excelled in films such as The Anti-War Alarm, where he worked alongside Richard Widmark, Now They Call Me Mr Tibbs and the Mythical Rebellion in the Classrooms, where he played the teacher who he left the skin for his students. He also directed films such as It Happened on a Saturday, and Let’s Do It Again, and Crazy Shots (starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder).
Born on February 20, 1927 in Miami, Sidney Poitier spent much of his childhood in the Bahamas, where his parents were originally from. After living through the first part of his troubled adolescence, at the age of 15, his parents sent him to Miami to live with his older brother. At the age of 17, Poitier went to New York where he practiced various professions. Soon, however, he decided to try his luck in the world of theater, although in the first rehearsals he was always rejected for his Bahamian accent. Little by little, and following a lot of hard work, he ended up making a place on the ever-competitive Broadway, starring in Lysistrata.
In late 1949, Darryl F. Zanuck gave him the opportunity to enter the world of cinema with the film No Way Out (1950), in which he played a black doctor who treated a white beat. From there, despite the difficulties of obtaining roles in a film industry where racism was very present, Poitier was making his way. Over the next few years he was able to work on high-budget films such as Weeping, Beloved Land (Darrell Roodt, 1951), Edge of the City (Martin Ritt, 1957), The Free Slave (Raoul Walsh, 1957), Fugitives. (Stanley Kramer, 1958) – the film with which he won the BAFTA for Best Actor at the UK Film Academy – and The Lilies of the Meadows, Ralph Nelson’s 1963 film became an icon following winning the Golden Globe for Best Dramatic Actor and the Oscar for Best Actor
In 2002, 38 years following receiving the Oscar for Best Actor, Poitier was chosen by the Hollywood Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive the Honorary Oscar. Throughout his life, Poitier wrote three autobiographical books, served as ambassador for the Bahamas to UNESCO, and in 1998 joined the Walt Disney Company Board of Directors.
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