Sidney Poitier, the first black actor to win the Oscar for Best Actor and a symbol of racial integration in the United States in the 1960s, died this Friday at the age of 94. The announcement of his death has come from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Bahamas, for whom he was ambassador for life.
He won the Oscar for ‘The lilies of the valley’, in 1963, although his best-known films would be ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, 1967’ (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, 1967), where he played the perfect son-in-law who uncovered the racist prejudices of an American middle-class couple starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.
He stood out in the anti-war film ‘State of alarm’ with Richard Widmark, ‘Now they call me Mr Tibbs’ and in the mythical ‘Rebellion in the classrooms’, where he played the teacher who left his skin for his students.
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He has also directed films such as ‘It Happened on a Saturday’, and ‘Let’s Do It Again’ (with his friend Bill Cosby), and ‘Smash Crazy’ (starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder).
In 2002, 38 years after receiving the Oscar for best actor, Poitier was chosen by the Hollywood Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive the Honorary Oscar.
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