Louis Gossett Jr., the first Black man to win a supporting actor Oscar and an Emmy winner for his role in the seminal TV miniseries “Roots” has died. He was 87.
FILE – Louis Gossett Jr. poses for a portrait in New York to promote the release of “Roots: The Complete Original Series” on Bu-ray on May 11, 2016. FILE – Louis Gossett Jr., poses with the Oscar for best supporting actor for his role in “An Officer and a Gentleman,” at the annual Academy Awards presentation in Los Angeles on April 11, 1983.
“Never mind the awards, never mind the glitz and glamor, the Rolls-Royces and the big houses in Malibu. It’s about the humanity of the people that he stood for,” his cousin said. “More than anything, it was a huge affirmation of my position as a Black actor,” he wrote in his 2010 memoir, “An Actor and a Gentleman.”
Gossett became friendly with James Dean and studied acting with Marilyn Monroe, Martin Landau and Steve McQueen at an offshoot of the Actors Studio taught by Frank Silvera. In 1968, he returned to Hollywood for a major role in “Companions in Nightmare,” NBC’s first made-for-TV movie that starred Melvyn Douglas, Anne Baxter and Patrick O’Neal.
After dinner at the hotel, he went for a walk and was stopped a block away by a police officer, who told him he broke a law prohibiting walking around residential Beverly Hills after 9 p.m. Two other officers arrived and Gossett said he was chained to a tree and handcuffed for three hours. He was eventually freed when the original police car returned.
“The Oscar gave me the ability of being able to choose good parts in movies like ‘Enemy Mine,’ ‘Sadat’ and ‘Iron Eagle,’” Gossett said in Dave Karger’s 2024 book “50 Oscar Nights.”“I’m going to donate it to a library so I don’t have to keep an eye on it,” he said in the book. “I need to be free of it.”
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Louis Gossett Jr., 1st Black man to win supporting actor Oscar, dies at 87Louis Gossett Jr., the first Black man to win a supporting actor Oscar and an Emmy winner for his role in the seminal TV miniseries “Roots,” has died
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