Poitier, Sidney

Sidney Poitier (left) with Lilia Skala in Lilies of the Field, 1963.
Springer—Bettmann/Corbis

(born February 20, 1927?, , Miami, Florida, U.S.) Bahamian American actor and motion-picture director and producer. Poitier is recognized as the actor who broke the colour barrier in the U.S. motion-picture industry and made the careers of other black actors possible.

Poitier was born prematurely in the United States while his parents were visiting from The Bahamas. He grew up on Cat Island, Bahamas, and returned as a teenager to the United States, where he enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II and served a brief stint in an army 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 the ANT six months later. This time he was accepted, and he began studying acting while appearing in a series of ANT productions. He made his feature-length movie debut as Dr. Luther Brooks, a black doctor who treats a bigoted white criminal, in No Way Out (1950). This film established a significant pattern both for Poitier himself and for the black actors who followed him; by refusing roles that played to a racial stereotype, Poitier pushed the restrictive boundaries set by Hollywood and made inroads into the American mainstream. Another of his notable early roles was Gregory Miller, an alienated high school student in the film adaptation of Evan Hunter's novel The Blackboard Jungle (1955). Despite his 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.

Among his other early notable film roles were Noah Cullen in The Defiant Ones (1958), which earned him an Academy Award nomination as best actor, Porgy in Porgy and Bess (1959), Homer Smith in Lilies of the Field (1963)—for which he received the Academy Award for best actor—and Gordon Raife in A Patch of Blue (1965). He was the second black actor to win an Academy Award (Hattie McDaniel had won a best supporting actress Oscar for Gone with the Wind in 1939) and the first to insist that productions upon which he worked have a certain percentage of black crew members. Poitier also starred in three popular movies in 1967—In the Heat of the Night, To Sir with Love, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

In 1969 Poitier founded the First Artists Production Company, and in 1972 he made his directorial debut with Buck and the Preacher. Among other films he directed are Uptown Saturday Night (1974), Stir Crazy (1980), and Ghost Dad (1990). After a long absence from the screen, Poitier appeared in Shoot to Kill (1988) and continued to act in feature films and made-for-television movies into the 21st century. In 2001, Poitier, the recipient of many prestigious acting awards, was presented with an honorary Academy Award for “his remarkable accomplishments as an artist and as a human being.” A dual citizen of the United States and The Bahamas, he was appointed ambassador to Japan for The Bahamas in 1997.