He was the first black actor to win an Oscar for Best Leading Actor for his role in Lilies of the Valley.
Sidney Poitier, the first black actor to win an Oscar for best leading actor, has died at 94. Born in Miami (Florida) in 1927, Poitier began his career on the stage of the theater. From that beginning, he showed his commitment against the racial segregation that in the 1960s still prevailed in much of the southern United States.
He kept fighting for equality after making the leap to the big screen. He won the golden Hollywood statuette for The Lilies of the Valley (1963), a Ralph Nelson film in which he plays a nomad in the Arizona desert whom a group of nuns refuses to pay after fixing a leaky barn.
Another of his iconic roles is that of Virgil Tibbs, the Philadelphia commissioner who makes a train stop in a town deep in the Mississippi. In the heat of the night, (directed by Norman Jewison in 1967), Poitier forms a peculiar pair with the chief of the local police, played by Rod Steiger, who does not hide his racist roots. It was an Oscar for best picture and Steiger won the best actor.
Also in 1967, the actor starred in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Tonight, in which he shared the screen with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. The film openly applauded interracial marriage, something that is still impossible to assimilate in much of the United States.
In 2002 he received a second honorary Oscar for his career.
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