Louis Gossett Jr.

Louis Cameron Gossett Jr. was born on May 27, 1936, in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York City. His mother, Hellen, was a nurse and his father, Louis Cameron Gossett, was a porter. He later added Jr. to his name to honor his father. He attended Mark Twain Intermediate School 239 and Abraham Lincoln High School, and he contracted polio during his youth.

A tall, athletic teenager, he was drawn into acting when a sports injury sidelined him from basketball and he took an acting class instead. His first role was in a school production of You Can't Take It with You.

Gossett graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn in 1954 and went on to New York University. He also studied acting at an offshoot of the Actors Studio taught by Frank Silvera, where his classmates included Marilyn Monroe, Martin Landau and Steve McQueen.

Encouraged by a teacher, Gossett auditioned for Take a Giant Step and made his Broadway debut in 1953, winning the Donaldson Award for best newcomer. He followed with The Desk Set (1955), and in 1959 played George Murchison in the original Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun with Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee, a role he repeated in the 1961 film. He joined the original cast of Jean Genet's The Blacks in 1961, and in 1964 replaced Billy Daniels opposite Sammy Davis Jr. in Golden Boy. He was also known as a folk singer at Gerde's Folk City in New York.

In the 1970s he built a screen career in films including The Landlord (1970), Skin Game (1971), Travels with My Aunt (1972), The Laughing Policeman (1974), The White Dawn (1974) and The Deep (1977), along with guest roles on Bonanza, The Rockford Files and The Partridge Family. His role as Fiddler in Roots (1977) won him an Emmy.

His defining role came in Taylor Hackford's An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) as Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley, a part originally conceived for a white actor. It won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and a Golden Globe. He went on to play Anwar Sadat in the miniseries Sadat (1983), the alien Jeriba Shigan in Enemy Mine (1985), Colonel Chappy Sinclair in the Iron Eagle films (1986 to 1995), and roles in Jaws 3-D, The Punisher (1989) and Toy Soldiers (1991). He won a Golden Globe for The Josephine Baker Story (1991).

In later years he appeared in HBO's Watchmen (2019), earning an Emmy nomination, Three Months (2022) and The Color Purple (2023). He voiced Lewis the bear in IF (2024), released after his death.

Gossett was married three times. His first marriage, to Hattie Glascoe, was annulled. He married Christina Mangosing on August 21, 1973; their son Satie, later a producer and director, was born in 1974, and they divorced in 1975. He married Star Search champion Cyndi James-Reese on December 25, 1987; they divorced in 1992. He adopted his son Sharron, later a chef, after seeing him as a seven-year-old in a television segment about children in desperate situations. Actor Robert Gossett was his first cousin.

He spoke openly about years of alcohol and cocaine addiction after his Oscar win and about his time in rehab.

Gossett experienced racism directly in Hollywood. In his memoir he described being stopped repeatedly by sheriff's officers in 1968 and handcuffed to a tree by Beverly Hills police for three hours. "Now I had come face-to-face with racism, and it was an ugly sight," he wrote. "But it was not going to destroy me."

He founded the Eracism Foundation, a nonprofit that created a toolbox and skill set to help young adults live a racially diverse and culturally inclusive life, including cultural diversity, historical education and anti-violence training. In 1987 he joined Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson in the Take Pride in America public service campaign launched by President Ronald Reagan.

Gossett's Oscar for An Officer and a Gentleman made him the first Black man to win Best Supporting Actor, and only the third Black nominee in that category. His Fiddler in Roots helped make the miniseries a cultural landmark. After his death, colleagues including Colman Domingo, Richard Gere, LeVar Burton and Viola Davis paid tribute. Domingo said there would be no him if there was no Gossett.

Donaldson Award for best newcomer (Take a Giant Step, 1953). Primetime Emmy Award for Roots (1977). Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for An Officer and a Gentleman (1983 ceremony), the first won by a Black man. Golden Globe Award for An Officer and a Gentleman. Golden Globe Award for The Josephine Baker Story. Further Emmy nominations for Ben Vereen: His Roots, Backstairs at the White House, Palmerstown, U.S.A., Sadat, A Gathering of Old Men, Touched by an Angel and Watchmen. He was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame.

Gossett's memoir, An Actor and a Gentleman, written with Phyllis Karas, was published by John Wiley and Sons in 2010. He gave long-form interviews to the Television Academy Foundation and the Pioneers of Television project, and served as a guest programmer on Turner Classic Movies in 2016.

Gossett struggled with a debilitating illness in the 1990s and early 2000s that he later attributed largely to toxic mold in his Malibu home. In February 2010 he announced he had early stage prostate cancer, and in December 2020 he was hospitalized with COVID-19 in Georgia.

He died on the morning of Friday, March 29, 2024, at a rehabilitation center in Santa Monica, California, aged 87. His family said: "It is with our heartfelt regret to confirm our beloved father passed away this morning." His death certificate listed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease as the cause, with heart failure and atrial fibrillation as contributing conditions. He was survived by his sons Satie and Sharron.