Sir Sidney Poitier is a Bahamian American actor, film director, author, and diplomat.
Background
He was born on born February 20, 1927, in Miami, Florida, United States. Sidney Poitier's parents were Evelyn (née Outten) and Reginald James Poitier, Bahamian farmers who owned a farm on Cat Island and traveled to Miami to sell tomatoes and other produce. Reginald worked as a cab driver in Nassau, Bahamas.
Poitier was the youngest of eight sons, and was born in Miami while his parents were visiting. His birth was two months premature and he was not expected to survive, but his parents remained in Miami for three months to nurse him to health. Poitier grew up in the Bahamas, then a British Crown colony.
Because of his birth in the United States, he automatically received American citizenship. Poitier's uncle has claimed that the Poitier ancestors on his father's side had migrated from Haiti and were probably among the runaway slaves who established maroon communities throughout the Bahamas, including Cat Island. He mentions that the surname Poitier is a French name, and there were no white Poitiers from the Bahamas.
Poitier lived with his family on Cat Island until he was 10, when they moved to Nassau, where he saw his first automobile, first experienced electricity, plumbing, refrigeration, and motion pictures.
At the age of 15, he was sent to Miami to live with his brother's large family.
Education
He never received any formal education and was taught to read by a Jewish waiter who coached him after working hours.
Career
He enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II and served a brief stint in a medical unit. Upon his discharge, he applied to the American Negro Theatre (ANT) in New York City. Refused a place because of his accent, he practiced American enunciation while listening to the accents of radio voices and reapplied to ANT six months later. This time he was accepted, and he began studying acting while appearing in a series of ANT productions. In 1946 he made his Broadway debut in Lysistrata.
Poitier’s first credited film role was Dr. Luther Brooks, a black doctor who treats a bigoted white criminal, in No Way Out (1950). The movie established a significant pattern both for Poitier himself and for the black actors who followed him: by refusing roles that played to racial stereotypes, Poitier pushed the restrictive boundaries set by Hollywood and made inroads into the American mainstream. He next appeared in Cry, the Beloved Country (1951), an adaptation of Alan Paton’s novel about a murder in apartheid South Africa; Poitier portrayed a reverend. Another of his notable early roles was Gregory Miller, an alienated high school student in the 1955 film adaptation of Evan Hunter’s novel The Blackboard Jungle (1954). Although he had a budding film career, Poitier continued to perform in live theatre and won critical acclaim on Broadway in 1959 with his starring role in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. He also starred in the 1961 film adaptation of the drama.
In the gripping drama Edge of the City (1957), Poitier starred as a dockworker whose friendship with a white coworker (John Cassavetes) raises the ire of a racist union boss. Band of Angels (1957) also examined racial tensions. Set at the time of the American Civil War, the melodrama featured Poitier as a rebellious overseer whose boss (Clark Gable) buys the daughter (Yvonne De Carlo) of a once-wealthy family, who, after her father’s death, discovers she is part black and is sold into slavery. In The Defiant Ones (1958), Poitier was cast as a prisoner who escapes with a white inmate (Tony Curtis); the two must overcome their racial prejudices in order to elude the police. The film, which was considered provocative at the time because of its call for racial harmony, earned Poitier an Oscar nomination for best actor; he became the first African American male performer to earn a nod in the lead category. He also earned acclaim for his work in Porgy and Bess (1959); he portrayed the disabled Porgy, who loves Bess (Dorothy Dandridge), a drug addict being pursued by a number of suitors.
Poitier made history as Homer Smith, an ex-GI who helps nuns build a chapel in Lilies of the Field (1963). His Academy Award win marked the first time a competitive Oscar had been awarded to an African American male. Poitier was also just the second black actor to win an Academy Award. After appearing in the biblical epic The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Poitier portrayed a man who befriends a blind girl (Elizabeth Hartman) in A Patch of Blue (1965); the moving drama also starred Shelley Winters as her abusive mother.
After the western Duel at Diablo (1966), Poitier starred in a series of acclaimed films. In To Sir, with Love (1967), he portrayed a charismatic schoolteacher who earns the respect of his students at an inner-city school. Next was In the Heat of the Night (1967), a crime drama that focused on the uneasy partnership that develops between a bigoted white Southern police chief (played by Rod Steiger) and Virgil Tibbs, an intellectual black Philadelphia detective (Poitier). The film received the Oscar for best picture, and Poitier later reprised the role in They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970) and The Organization (1971). Poitier’s other movie from 1967 was Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, in which he portrayed the fiancé of a white woman (Katharine Houghton) who takes him home to meet her liberal parents (Spencer Tracy, in his last film, and Katharine Hepburn). The success of the movies made Poitier the top box-office draw of the year.
In 1972 Poitier made his directorial debut with Buck and the Preacher, an amiable western in which he played a con-man preacher; his costars were Harry Belafonte and Ruby Dee. He next helmed A Warm December (1973), a melodrama that featured Poitier as a widowed doctor who falls in love with a woman (Esther Anderson) who has sickle cell anemia. Both films were disappointments at the box office, but the comedy Uptown Saturday Night (1974) was an enormous hit, thanks to the chemistry between Poitier and co-stars Bill Cosby and Belafonte. Poitier then reteamed with Cosby on Let’s Do It Again (1975) and A Piece of the Action (1977).
Poitier did not act in Stir Crazy (1980), which featured Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor as a pair of losers who mistakenly are sent to prison; the film was an enormous box-office hit. Poitier had less success with Hanky Panky (1982), which teamed Wilder and his real-life wife, Gilda Radner, and Fast Forward (1985), a musical about break dancers. Cosby returned for Poitier’s last directorial effort, Ghost Dad (1990), but the film failed to match their earlier successes.
After more than a decadelong break from acting, in 1988 Poitier appeared in the action thrillers Shoot to Kill and Little Nikita. His other films include Sneakers (1992) and The Jackal (1997), but most of his later credits were made-for-television movies, notably Separate but Equal (1991) and Mandela and de Klerk (1997), in which he played Thurgood Marshall and Nelson Mandela, respectively. His final role was in The Last Brickmaker in America (2001), a TV movie about a grieving widower whose job is becoming obsolete.
A dual citizen of the United States and The Bahamas, he served as ambassador to Japan for The Bahamas from 1997 to 2007. Poitier chronicled his experiences in This Life (1980) and The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography (2000). Life Beyond Measure: Letters to My Great-Granddaughter (2008) was a volume of advice and insights in epistolary form. He also released a suspense novel, Montaro Caine, in 2013.
Sir Sidney Poitier is an actor, director and diplomat best known for being the first black person to have been awarded the Academy Award for Best Actor. He won this award for his portrayal of Homer Smith, an African American worker in the film, Lilies of the Field. This was a very significant achievement in the 1960s when racism was rampant in the United States. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Poitier among the Greatest Male Stars of classic Hollywood cinema, ranking 22nd on the list of 25.
In 2002, thirty-eight years after receiving the Best Actor Award, Poitier was chosen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive an Academy Honorary Award, in recognition of his "remarkable accomplishments as an artist and as a human being".
Poitier was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1974. On August 12, 2009, Poitier was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama. In 2016, he was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship for outstanding lifetime achievement in film.
He was raised a Roman Catholic but, later became an agnostic with views closer to deism.
Politics
In April 1997, Poitier was appointed ambassador of the Bahamas to Japan, a position he held until 2007. From 2002 to 2007, he was concurrently the ambassador of the Bahamas to UNESCO.
While serving as Japan’s ambassador, he took on his second diplomatic assignment as ambassador to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 2002, until he stepped down from both posts in 2007. Whether as an actor in groundbreaking roles or a diplomat, Poitier has served both the U.S. and his native home, The Bahamas, with passion and zeal.
Views
Quotations:
"So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness."
"To simply wake up every morning a better person than when I went to bed."
"I decided in my life that I would do nothing that did not reflect positively on my father's life."
"We all suffer from the preoccupation that there exists... in the loved one, perfection."
"History passes the final judgment."
"But my dad also was a remarkable man, a good person, a principled individual, a man of integrity."
"So I'm OK with myself, with history, my work, who I am and who I was."
"I come from a great family. I've seen family life and I know how wonderful, how nurturing, and how wonderful it can be."
Membership
He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Personality
A humble journey, hard work, perseverance and determination led him to his way of his way to become one of the Greatest Male Stars of All Time.
Quotes from others about the person
At the AFI banquet, reported David J. Fox in the Los Angeles Times, James Earl Jones praised his friend's work on behalf of the civil right struggle, declaring, "He marched on Montgomery (Alabama) and Memphis (Tennessee) with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who said of Sidney: 'He's a man who never lost his concern for the least of God's children."' Indeed, Rosa Parks, who in 1955 touched off a crucial battle for desegregation simply by refusing to sit in the "negro" section of a Montgomery bus, attended the tribute and lauded Poitier as "a great actor and role model."
Connections
Poitier was first married to Juanita Hardy from April 29, 1950, until 1965. In 1959, Poitier began a nine-year affair with actress Diahann Carroll. He has been married to Joanna Shimkus, a Canadian former actress of Lithuanian-Jewish and Irish descent, since January 23, 1976. He has four daughters with his first wife and two with his second: Beverly, Pamela, Sherri, Gina, Anika, and Sydney Tamiia.
In addition to his six daughters, Poitier has eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Father:
Reginald James Poitier
Mother:
Evelyn Poitier
Brother:
George Poitier
Brother:
Cyril Morton Poitier
Spouse (1):
Juanita Hardy
Spouse (2):
Joanna Shimkus
(born 30 October 1943)
She is a Canadian actress and is married to American actor and diplomat Sidney Poitier.
Daughter:
Anika Poitier
(February 29, 1972 Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States)
Daughter:
Beverly Henderson
Daughter:
Sydney Tamiia Poitier
(born November 15, 1973)
She is a Bahamian-American television and film actress.
Daughter:
Pamela Michelle Poitier
Daughter:
Sherri Poitier
Daughter:
Gina Poitier
Partner:
Diahann Carroll
(July 17, 1935)
She is an American television and stage actress, singer and model known for her performances in some of the earliest major studio films to feature black casts, including Carmen Jones (1954) and Porgy and Bess (1959) as well as on Broadway.
