Sidney Poitier (Born on February 20, 1927, in Florida, U.S.)was an American actor, film director, diplomat, and the first black male Oscar winner for the Best Leading Actor, also recognized as the first black movie star. Poitier served as the Bahamian Ambassador to Japan from 1997 to 2007.
In 1963, Poitier became the first black actor to win the Oscar for Best Actor with his performance in the movie “Lilies of the Field”. In 1999, the American Film Institute selected Poitier as a finalist in American Film Institute 100-year-old star and ranked 22nd among 25 male actors.
Poitier has directed some popular films like Stir Crazy, Fast Forward, Hanky Panky, Ghost Dad, and Buck and the Preacher. In 2002, 38 years after he won the Oscar for Best Actor, Poitier won the Oscar for Lifetime Achievement awarded by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his extraordinary expressiveness.
He is also the Bahamas Ambassador to UNESCO. On August 12, 2009, Sidney Poitier was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama, which is the highest honor for American civilians.
Facts About Sidney Poitier
- Born: February 20, 1927 (age 94), in Miami, Florida, U.S.
- Known For: His acting in the movie (Lilies of the Field)
- Height: 1.89 m
- Occupation: Actor, director, ambassador
- Citizenship: Bahamian, American
- Religion: Christianity
- Father: Reginald James Poitier
- Mother: Evelyn Poitier
- Spouse(s): Juanita Hardy (m. 1950; div. 1965), Joanna Shimkus (m. 1976)
- Children:
Sydney Tamiia Poitier
Anika Poitier
Pamela Poitier
Beverly Poitier-Henderson
Gina Poitier
Sherri Poitier - Net Worth: $25 million
- Quotes: But my dad also was a remarkable man, a good person, a principled individual, a man of integrity.
Early Life of Sidney Poitier
Sidney Poitier was born in Miami, Florida, where his Bahamian parents were visiting. The Poitiers grew up on the Island In the Caribbean, then resided in Miami, where his parents, Reginald James Poitier and Evelyn Poitier, traveled to sell tomatoes and other products of the farm on the Cat Island.
Poitier was born two months premature and the baby’s hopes of survival were slim, so his parents stayed in the United States for 3 months. to take care of him. Thus the actor automatically received American citizenship.
At the age of 10, his parents moved to Nassau in the Bahamas at the age of 15, his parents sent him to Miami to live with his brother. At the age of 17, he moved to New York where he worked as a washerman.
With the help of a Jewish waiter who sat with him every evening, he learned to read the newspaper. Later he decided to be classified in the US Army and was fired when he spent a successful hearing through which received a job in the American Negro Theater.
A Career as an Actor
In 1946, Sidney Poitier made his debut as a lead role in the play Lysistrata (based on the comedy of the same name by Aristophanes) on Broadway, which gave him good reviews. There, her manager noticed him 20th Century Fox, Daryl F. Zanuck, who hired him to star in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s film No Way Out (1949) as a doctor threatened by a white man played by Richard Windmark.
His performance led him to more roles, most of which were notable, than those offered to other African-American actors of the period. He established himself with his role in the film Blackboard Jungle (1955), where he appeared as a student of an incompetent class alongside Glenn Ford.
The Poitier was the first African-American actress who was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor for his film 1958 When we broke the chains (The Defiant Ones). He was also the first actor to win the award (for the film Lillies of the Field (1963).
(They had preceded the awards of Hattie McDaniel who won Oscar Supporting Actress for the film Gone with the Wind (Gone With the Wind, 1939) and James Basketball received an honorary Academy Award for his performance in the film of Disney Song South (Song of the South).
Despite his victory, Poitiers feared that the film industry’s only award granted to impress the crowds and to prohibit the biggest and most important requirements in the future. The year after his victory, he worked hard and remained the only African-American actor in Hollywood to be successful, but the roles offered to him were indifferent.
In 1967 proved the busiest of the year with three films to be the most popular of the year: Story of a Crime (In the Heat of the Night), Guess Who Come Night (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner), and To Our Lord with Love (To Sir, with Love). In The Crime Story, he landed one of his most popular roles as police officer Virgil Tibbs.
The character of Tibbs appeared in two other films starring Poitier, They Call Me MISTER Tibbs !, 1970, and The Organization (1971), which did not have the success of the original. In 1968 he wrote the screenplay for For Love of Ivy, where he also starred.
The press began to accuse Poitier of being standardized in idealized African-American roles, who were not allowed to have sexual or personal passions and flaws, as was the case with the character he played in Guess Who Will Come Tonight.
Poitier had realized what was happening, but he was hesitant about it: he wanted a wider variety of roles, on the one hand, and he wanted to shake off the stereotype of the black film industry. He was also one of the reasons for rejecting the role of Othello in the eponymous television metaphor of theater of Shakespeare from the NBC channel.
In 2002, Poitier received an Honorary Oscar for his contribution to the 7th art. After the death of Ernest Borgnine in 2012, he is the oldest living Oscar winner for Best Actor.
A career as a director
Poitier directed several films. He made his directorial debut in 1972 with Buck and the Preacher, co-starring with Harry Belafonte. The most commercial film he directed was Now … Nothing Stops Us (Stir Crazy, 1980) which was considered for many years the greatest commercial success by an African-American director.
It starred Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. In 1974, he re-directed Harry Bellafonte with his friend Bill Cosby in Uptown Saturday Night. In 1975 directed Bill Cosby again in Let`s Do It Again. The 1977 film A Piece of Action marked the beginning of his abstinence from acting in order to devote himself to directing. He returned to acting in 1988 with his role in the film Shoot to Kill.
Personal Life
On April 29, 1950, Sidney Poitier married Juanita Hardy for the first time. But the relationship lasted only until 1965. on January 23, 1976, he subsequently married a Canadian actress of Lithuanian-Jewish descent named Joanna Shimkus.
Sidney Poitier has four daughters from his first marriage and two from his second marriage. His fifth daughter Sydney Tamiia Poitier is also an actress.
Diplomatic Career
From April 1997 to 2007 Poitier was the Bahamas Ambassador to Japan, but the Bahamas government limited his activities to representative tasks. He himself did not reside in Japan but was represented. Poitier also represented the Bahamas from 2002 to 2007 as an ambassador to UNESCO.
Honors and Awards
- 1958 British Academy of Film and Television Arts Best Foreign Actor-“Escape from Prison”
- 1958 Silver Bear Award for Best Actor ( Berlin International Film Festival )-“Escape from Prison”
- 1963 Academy Award for Best Actor- “Wild Lily”
- 1963 Golden Globe Award for Best Actor-“Wild Lily”
- 1963 Silver Bear Award for Best Actor ( Berlin International Film Festival )-“Wild Lily”
- 1974 Order of the British Empire (KBE)
- 1982 Cecil B. Demir Prize
- 1992 AFI Lifetime Achievement Award
- 1995 Kennedy Center Honor Award
- 1997 Appointed as Bahamas Ambassador to Japan
- 1999 Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award
- 2000 Image Award of the Association for the Promotion of Colored People- “Ordinary Noah”
- 2001 Image Award of Colored People Promotion Association
- Grammy Award for Best Spoken English Album – The Measure of a Man
- 2002 Oscar Lifetime Achievement Award
- 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom
Sidney Poitier Books
- For Love of Ivy: a Novel Sidney Poitier
- This life
- The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography
- My legacy: Kind of an autobiography
- Life Beyond Measure
- Montaro Caine
- Autobiographies, Company Management, and Customer Service
Sidney Poitier Quotes
- History passes the final judgment. – Sidney Poitier
- I decided in my life that I would do nothing that did not reflect positively on my father’s life. – Sidney Poitier
- I was the only Black person on the set. It was unusual for me to be in a circumstance in which every move I made was tantamount to representation of 18 million people. – Sidney Poitier
- To simply wake up every morning a better person than when I went to bed. – Sidney Poitier
- My father was a poor man, very poor in a British colonial possession where class and race were very important. – Sidney Poitier
- So I’m OK with myself, with history, my work, who I am and who I was. – Sidney Poitier