Sidney Poitier died at the age of 94, this Friday, January 7. Civil rights activist on the other side of the Atlantic, the American and Bahamian actor became the first black actor to obtain the Oscar for best actor in 1963, for his role in “The Lily of the Fields”.
Born in 1927 in Miami, Sidney Poitier was the youngest of a family of seven who grew up in the Bahamas. He moved to Miami at the age of 15, with one of his brothers, before moving to New York a year later. He made his Broadway debut in 1946 in the play Lysistrata. He was first noticed in the cinema in the film Graine de violence, released in 1955, where he played the role of a student in a vocational high school facing poverty and exclusion.
It was in 1958 that he obtained his first Oscar nomination for his role in La Chaîne. Before receiving the precious statuette five years later. Its notoriety has never ceased to grow thanks to the success of the films Un raisin au soleil, In the heat of the night, Guess who’s coming to dinner?, Or The Angels with the clenched fists. The militants of the black cause will however be critical against him, reproaching him for accepting to be the “negro of service”, the “fantasy of the whites”.
Another kind of influence
Tired of controversies, Sidney Poitier gave new impetus to his career in 1972, by becoming a director (which did not prevent him from playing comedy as well). His first film is a western, Buck and his accomplice, in which he co-starred with Harry Belafonte. In total, Sidney Poitier will make 7 films, simultaneously pursuing his acting career.
He retired from cinema in the 1980s to become an ambassador to UNESCO. In 1998, however, he came out of retirement for a remarkable appearance in the film The Jackal, alongside Richard Gere and Bruce Willis. Three years later, he was awarded an Honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement. In 2009, President Barack Obama presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the largest American civilian award.