Roots star Louis Gossett Jr., who was first Black man to win supporting actor Oscar, dead at 87
OSCAR-winning actor Louis Gossett Jr. has died at the age of 87.
Gossett was the first Black man to receive an Academy Award for his supporting role in An Officer and a Gentleman in 1983.
He became a household name when he earned an Emmy in the iconic TV miniseries Roots in 1977.
A cause of death has not been released.
On Friday, the star’s nephew told the Associated Press that he died in Santa Monica, California, but did not provide other details.
BORN A STAR
Louis Cameron Gossett Jr. was born in Coney Island on May 27, 1936.
His parents were a porter and a nurse.
Gossett began acting early in his life after a basketball injury redirected his energy and talents from the court to the stage.
“I was hooked — and so was my audience,” he said in his memoir An Actor and a Gentleman, published in 2010.
His acting debut occurred during his Brooklyn high school’s production of You Can’t Take It with You, and by the time he was 16, he had scored his first role on Broadway in Take a Giant Step.
“I knew too little to be nervous,” Gossett wrote. “In retrospect, I should have been scared to death as I walked onto that stage, but I wasn’t.”
Gossett later received a scholarship for both basketball and acting to attend New York University, where he quickly began mingling with the likes of Marylin Monroe, Ed Sullivan, and James Dean.
By 1964, he had secured a recurring role in Golden Boy on Broadway, replacing Billy Daniels.
NOT EASY
Gossett shared some of the many struggles with racism that he faced throughout his career in Hollywood in his memoir too.
I realized this was happening because I was Black and had been showing off with a fancy car — which, in their view, I had no right to be driving.
Louis Gossett Jr.
When Gossett first went to California in 1961 to film A Raisin in the Sun, he recounted staying in a filthy motel covered in cockroaches — the only place that would accept Black people.
When he made it back to Hollywood to star in NBC’s Companions in Nightmare, he stayed in a fancy hotel and was given a rented convertible to drive around town.
But police stopped him twice on the road: Once ordering him to turn down his radio and put up the convertible top, and a second time searching his vehicle and calling the rental company to check his documents.
“Though I understood that I had no choice but to put up with this abuse, it was a terrible way to be treated, a humiliating way to feel,” Gossett wrote.
“I realized this was happening because I was Black and had been showing off with a fancy car — which, in their view, I had no right to be driving.”
On that same 1968 trip, Gossett said he was stopped a third time by police while taking a walk and told it was prohibited to walk around Beverly Hills after 9 pm.
The officer arrested the star and chained him to a tree for three hours.
“Now I had come face-to-face with racism, and it was an ugly sight — but it was not going to destroy me,” he wrote.
Gossett eventually founded the Eracism Foundation to support projects working to end racism around the world.
LATER YEARS
Gossett continued to wrack up credits in popular films like The Josephine Baker Story and The Color Purple throughout his life but faced addiction at the same time.
He admitted to struggling with cocaine and alcohol after earning his Oscar and was eventually admitted to a rehab clinic where he was also diagnosed with toxic mold syndrome.
The actor told fans in 2010 that he had received a diagnosis of early-stage prostate cancer and came down with COVID in 2020.
Gossett married three women in his life, with the last union with Cyndi Hames-Reese ending in 1992.
He is survived by his two sons, Satie and Sharron, the latter of whom was adopted by Gossett as a 7-year-old.