Louis Gossett Jnr, first black man to win supporting actor Oscar for role in ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’, dies at 87
- Gossett Jnr, was the first Black man to win a supporting actor Oscar. He also won an Emmy Award for his role in the seminal TV miniseries ‘Roots’
- Gossett’s nephew said that the actor died on Thursday night in Santa Monica, California. No cause of death was revealed
Louis Gossett Jnr, 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.
Gossett’s nephew told Associated Press that the actor died on Thursday night in Santa Monica, California. No cause of death was revealed.
Gossett always thought of his early career as a reverse Cinderella story, with success finding him from an early age and propelling him forward, toward his Academy Award for An Officer and a Gentleman.
He earned his first acting credit in his Brooklyn high school’s production of You Can’t Take It with You while he was sidelined from the basketball team with an injury.
“I was hooked – and so was my audience,” he wrote in his 2010 memoir An Actor and a Gentleman.
His English teacher urged him to go into Manhattan to try out for Take a Giant Step. He got the part and made his Broadway debut in 1953 at age 16.
“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.”
