American actor Sidney Poitier is dead. His death was announced by Chester Cooper, Deputy Prime Minister of the Bahamas. “We have lost an icon, a mentor, a fighter, a national treasure,” writes Cooper on Facebook. Poitier was born in Florida, his parents come from the Bahamas, where he was also a citizen.
Poitier was the first black actor ever to receive an Oscar for a leading role. It was 1964 for “Lilies in the Field”. The film from 1963 tells of trust in God, in its American version, a trust that was supported by initiative, pragmatic sense and practical efficiency. In 2002 he received another Academy Award for his life’s work.
Born in Miami in 1927, but raised in the Bahamas, Poitier first had to get rid of his Bahamas accent in order to be accepted at the theater. There he worked with Harry Belafonte, among others, and in 1950 he got his first film role in “No Way Out”, a liberal doctor who comes up against the racist Richard Widmark. He was also featured in “Flucht in Ketten” (1958).
A few years after his breakthrough with “Lilien auf dem Felde” he shot “In der Wärme der Nacht” with Rod Steiger and “Rat mal, who comes to dinner” (both 1967) and became a box office star in American cinema. Many of his films were about racism, and later he directed himself – the first time in 1972 with “The Path of the Damned”.