SIDNEY POITIER, FIRST BLACK MAN TO WIN AN OSCAR

Today, The Grandma has been relaxing at home. She has decided to watch some films, and she has chosen Sidney Poitier ones. Sidney Poitier is a Bahamian-American retired actor who was born on a day like today in 1927.

Sidney Poitier (February 20, 1927) is a Bahamian-American retired actor, film director, and ambassador.

In 1964, Poitier won the Academy Award for Best Actor, on his second nomination, becoming the first black male and Afro-Bahamian actor to win that award. He is currently the oldest living and earliest surviving Best Actor Academy Award winner. From 1997 to 2007, he served as the Bahamian Ambassador to Japan.

His entire family lived in the Bahamas, then still a British colony, but Poitier was born unexpectedly in Miami while they were visiting for the weekend, which automatically granted him American citizenship. He grew up in the Bahamas, but moved back to Miami aged 15 and to New York when he was 16. He joined the North American Negro Theatre, landing his breakthrough film role as an incorrigible high school student in the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle.

In 1958, Poitier starred with Tony Curtis as chained-together escaped convicts in the The Defiant Ones, which received nine Academy Award nominations. Both actors received a nomination for Best Actor, with Poitier's being the first for a black actor, and a nomination for a BAFTA, which Poitier won.

In 1964, he won the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for Lilies of the Field (1963) in which he played a handyman helping a group of German-speaking nuns build a chapel. Poitier also received acclaim for A Raisin in the Sun (1961) and A Patch of Blue (1965).

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He continued to break ground in three successful 1967 films which dealt with issues of race and race relations: To Sir, with Love; Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and In the Heat of the Night. He was the top box-office star of the year. He received Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for the latter film, but not for the Oscars, likely due to vote splitting between his roles.

After twice reprising his Virgil Tibbs role from In the Heat of the Night and acting in a variety of other films, including the thriller The Wilby Conspiracy (1975), with Michael Caine, Poitier turned to acting/directing with the action-comedies Uptown Saturday Night (1974), Let's Do It Again (1975), and A Piece of the Action (1978), all co-starring Bill Cosby.

During a decade away from acting, he directed the hit Stir Crazy (1980) starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, among other films. He returned to acting in the late 1980s and early 1990s in a few thrillers and television roles.

Poitier was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 1974.

In 2009, Poitier was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honour.

In 2016, he was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship for outstanding lifetime achievement in film.

Sidney Poitier was the youngest of seven children, born to Evelyn and Reginald James Poitier, Bahamian farmers who owned a farm on Cat Island. The family would travel to Miami to sell tomatoes and other produce. Reginald also worked as a cab driver in Nassau, Bahamas.

Poitier was born unexpectedly 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. Owing to his unplanned birth in the United States, he was automatically entitled to American citizenship.

Poitier joined the American Negro Theater, but was rejected by audiences. Contrary to what was expected of black actors at the time, Poitier's tone deafness made him unable to sing. Determined to refine his acting skills and rid himself of his noticeable Bahamian accent, he spent the next six months dedicating himself to achieving theatrical success. On his second attempt at the theater, he was noticed and given a leading role in the Broadway production Lysistrata, for which, though it ran a failing four days, he received an invitation to understudy for Anna Lucasta.

By late 1949, he had to choose between leading roles on stage and an offer to work for Darryl F. Zanuck in the film No Way Out (1950).

In 1951, he travelled to South Africa with the African-American actor Canada Lee to star in the film version of Cry, the Beloved Country. Poitier's breakout role was as Gregory W. Miller, a member of an incorrigible high-school class in Blackboard Jungle (1955).

More information: BFI

In 1958, he starred alongside Tony Curtis in director Stanley Kramer's The Defiant Ones.

He was also the first black actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for Lilies of the Field in 1963.

He acted in the first production of A Raisin in the Sun on Broadway in 1959, and later starred in the film version released in 1961. He also gave memorable performances in The Bedford Incident (1965), and A Patch of Blue (1965) co-starring Elizabeth Hartman and Shelley Winters.

In 1967, he was the most successful draw at the box office, the commercial peak of his career, with three popular films, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner; To Sir, with Love and In the Heat of the Night. The last film featured his most successful character, Virgil Tibbs, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, detective whose subsequent career was the subject of two sequels: They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! (1970) and The Organization (1971). Many of the films in which Poitier starred during the 1960s would later be cited as social thrillers by both filmmakers and critics.

In 2002, Poitier received the 2001 Honorary Academy Award for his overall contribution to American cinema.

Poitier has directed several films, the most successful being the Richard Pryor-Gene Wilder comedy Stir Crazy, which for many years was the highest-grossing film directed by a person of African descent. His feature film directorial debut, in 1972, was the Western, Buck and the Preacher, in which Poitier also starred, alongside Harry Belafonte. Poitier replaced the original director, Joseph Sargent. Poitier also directed and starred, the next year, in the romance drama, A Warm December. The trio of Poitier, Cosby, and Belafonte reunited, with Poitier again directing, in Uptown Saturday Night. He directed Cosby in Let's Do It Again, A Piece of the Action, and Ghost Dad. Poitier directed, Fast Forward, in 1985.

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.

More information: ABC News

 I was the only Black person on the set.
It was unusual for me to be in a circumstance
in which every move I made was tantamount
to representation of 18 million people.

Sidney Poitier