Sources
Help build the largest human-edited directory on the web.
Submit a site - Become an editor
Wikipedia. Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Are you an expert in this subject? Join the discussion and share your knowledge at Wikipedia.org.
Sidney Poitier
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Sidney Poitier | ||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Sidney Poitier (left) with Harry Belafonte (center) and Charlton Heston (right) at the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C |
||||||||||||||||||
| Born | February 20, 1927 at sea, recorded in Miami, Florida, but possibly born in Bahamas |
|||||||||||||||||
| Spouse(s) | Juanita Hardy (1950-1965) Joanna Shimkus (1976-) |
|||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
Sir Sidney Poitier KBE, (pronounced /ˈpwɑːtieɪ/) (born February 20, 1927), is an Academy Award-winning Bahamian American actor, film director, and activist. He broke through as a star in acclaimed performances in American films and plays, which, by consciously defying racial stereotyping, gave a new dramatic credibility for black actors to mainstream film audiences in the Western world.
In 1963, Poitier became the first black actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor - for his role in Lilies of the Field. The significance of this achievement was later compounded in 1967 when he starred in three very well received films - To Sir, With Love, In the Heat of the Night, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner - making him the top box office star of that year. [1]
Poitier has also directed a number of popular movies such as Uptown Saturday Night, and Let's Do It Again (with friend Bill Cosby), and Stir Crazy (starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder). In 2002, 38 years after receiving the Best Actor Award, Poitier was chosen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive the Honorary Award in recognition of his "extraordinary performances and unique presence on the screen and for representing the industry with dignity, style and intelligence."[2]
Contents |
By Poitier's own account, he was born in The Bahamas and later moved to the United States. He related this description of events after accepting an award. By other accounts, he was born at sea en route to Miami, Florida, where his Bahamian parents traveled to sell tomatoes and other produce from their farm on tiny Cat Island. Poitier was born prematurely and was not originally expected to survive the boat ride; his birth was recorded in Miami (though he may not have been born there), as the vessel was already closer to Florida. He spent his early years on remote Cat Island, which had a population of 4,000 and no electricity.
During his early teenage years, Poitier traveled to Nassau with his family. As he got older, he displayed an increasing inclination toward juvenile delinquency. At the age of 15, his parents shipped him off to Miami to live with his older brother. At age 17, Poitier moved to New York City and held a string of menial jobs. During this time, he was arrested for vagrancy after being thrown out of his housing complex for not paying rent, and decided to join the United States Army. He then tried his hand at the American Negro Theater, where he was handily rejected by audiences. Determined to refine his acting skills and rid himself of his noticeable Bahamian accent, he spent the next six months dedicating himself to achieving theatrical success. On his second attempt at the theater, he was noticed and given a leading role in the Broadway production Lysistrata, for which he got excellent reviews. By the end of 1949, he was having to choose between leading roles on stage and an offer to work for Darryl F. Zanuck in the film No Way Out (1950). His performance in No Way Out as a doctor treating a white bigot got him plenty of notice and led to more roles, each considerably more interesting and prominent than most black actors of the time were getting, though still less so than those white actors routinely obtained.
In Hollywood, Poitier made many memorable movies. His breakout role was as a member of an incorrigible high school class in the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle (although, like most of the actors in the film, he was not a teenager, and was in fact aged 27).
He was the first male black actor to be nominated for a competitive Academy Award (for The Defiant Ones, 1958), and also the first to win the Academy Award for Best Actor (for Lilies of the Field in 1963). (James Baskett was the first to receive an Oscar, an Honorary Academy Award for his performance as Uncle Remus in the Walt Disney production of Song of the South in 1948).
He acted in the first production of A Raisin in the Sun on Broadway in 1959, and later starred in the film version released in 1961. He also gave memorable performances in The Bedford Incident (1965), A Patch of Blue (1965) co-starring Elizabeth Hartman and Shelley Winters; Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967); and To Sir, with Love (1967). Poitier was also memorable as Virgil Tibbs, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania detective in the hit 1967 movie In the Heat of the Night and its two sequels: They Call Me Mister Tibbs (1970) and The Organization (1971).
Poitier has directed several films, the most successful being the Richard Pryor-Gene Wilder comedy Stir Crazy, which for years was the highest grossing film directed by a person of African descent. His feature film directorial debut was the western Buck and the Preacher in which Poitier also starred in alongside Harry Belafonte. Poitier replaced original director Joseph Sargent. The trio of Poitier, Cosby, and Belafonte reunited again (with Poitier again directing) in Uptown Saturday Night. Poitier also directed Cosby in Let's Do It Again, A Piece of the Action, and Ghost Dad.
Poitier was first married to Juanita Hardy from April 29, 1950 until 1965.[citation needed] He has been married to Joanna Shimkus, a Canadian-born former actress of Lithuanian descent, since January 23, 1976. He has four children by his first marriage and two children by his second marriage, all girls. His fifth daughter is actress Sydney Tamiia Poitier.
He has written two autobiographical books, This Life (1980) and The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography (2000). In January 2007, the latter became an Oprah's Book Club selection.
|
|
- Buck and the Preacher (1972)
- A Warm December (1973)
- Uptown Saturday Night (1974)
- Let's Do it Again (1975)
- A Piece of the Action (1977)
- Stir Crazy (1980)
- Fast Forward (1985)
- Ghost Dad (1990)
- Separate but Equal (1991)
- Children of the Dust (1995)
- To Sir, with Love II (1996)
- Mandela and De Klerk (1997)
- David and Lisa (1998)
- The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn (1999)
- The Last Bricklayer in America (2001)
- 2002 Honorary Oscar - "For his extraordinary performances and unique presence on the screen and for representing the industry with dignity, style and intelligence."
- 2001 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album - Rick Harris, John Runnette (producers) and Sidney Poitier for The Measure of a Man
- 2001 NAACP Image Award - Hall of Fame Award
- 2000 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special for The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn
- 1999 Kennedy Center Honors
- Appointed non-resident Bahamian Ambassador to Japan in 1997
- 1995 SAG Life Achievement Award
- 1992 AFI Life Achievement Award
- Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, awarded in 1974. As Poitier is a citizen of the Bahamas, a Commonwealth Realm that subscribes to the British Honours System, this is a substantive (as opposed to honourary) knighthood, which entitles him to the title "Sir".
- 1964 Golden Globe Awards: Film, Best Actor, Drama for Lilies of the Field
- 1963 Academy Award for Best Actor for Lilies of the Field
- 1958 Foreign BAFTA Award for Best Actor for The Defiant Ones
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Henry Fonda for 12 Angry Men |
BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role 1958 for The Defiant Ones |
Succeeded by Jack Lemmon for Some Like It Hot |
| Preceded by Gregory Peck for To Kill a Mockingbird |
Academy Award for Best Actor 1963 for Lilies of the Field |
Succeeded by Rex Harrison for My Fair Lady |
| Preceded by Gregory Peck for To Kill a Mockingbird |
Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama 1964 for Lilies of the Field |
Succeeded by Peter O'Toole for Becket |
| Preceded by Gene Kelly |
Cecil B. DeMille Award 1982 |
Succeeded by Laurence Olivier |
| Preceded by Kirk Douglas |
AFI Life Achievement Award 1992 |
Succeeded by Elizabeth Taylor |
| Preceded by Jack Cardiff, Ernest Lehman |
Academy Honorary Award 2002 with Robert Redford |
Succeeded by Peter O'Toole |
- List of African American firsts
- David Hampton, an impostor who posed as Poitier's son "David" in 1983, which inspired a play and a film, Six Degrees of Separation.
- Sidney Poitier biography and video interview excerpts by The National Visionary Leadership Project
- Official publisher web page
- Sidney Poitier at the Internet Movie Database
- Sidney Poitier at the TCM Movie Database
- Sidney Poitier at the Internet Broadway Database
- Poitier breaks new ground with Oscar win (BBC, April 13, 1964)
- African-Americans: Sidney Poitier
- Sidney Poitier to get Marian Anderson Award (July 26, 2006)
- The Purpose Prize: Sidney Poitier
- The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography - Review
- Promo pictures from The Lost Man
Categories: All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements since September 2007 | American film actors | American film directors | Best Actor Academy Award winners | BAFTA winners (people) | Best Drama Actor Golden Globe (film) | Grammy Award winners | Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award | Kennedy Center Honors recipients | Hollywood Walk of Fame | Actors Studio alumni | African-American actors | African American film directors | Bahamian people | Caribbean-Americans | Bahamian Americans | Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire | 1927 births | Living people