, the tough guy with a sensitive side who won an Oscar for his portrayal of a steely sergeant in and an Emmy for his performance as a compassionate slave in the landmark miniseries , has died. He was 87. Gossett’s nephew that the
Actor died Thursday night in Santa Monica. The cause of death is unknown, but Gossett announced in 2010 that he had prostate
cancer. With his sleek, bald pate and athlete’s physique, Gossett was intimidating in a wide array of no-nonsense roles, most notably in Taylor Hackford’s (1982), where as Gunnery Sgt. Emil Foley he rides Richard Gere’s character mercilessly (but for his own good) at an officer candidate school and gets into a memorable martial arts fight. He was the second Black man to win an acting Oscar, following in 1964. For the role, the 6-foot-4 Gossett trained for 30 days at the Marine Corps Recruitment Division, an adjunct of Camp Pendleton north of San Diego. “I knew I had to put myself through at least some degree of this all-encompassing transformation,” Gossett wrote in his 2010 biography, . Douglas Day Stewart’s original script called for Gere’s Zack Mayo to beat up Foley. “The Marines changed it,” Gossett in a 2010 interview. “They said that an enlisted man would never beat up a drill sergeant. We’ll tear the place up unless you change it. They said, ‘If you don’t do this well, Mr. Gossett, we’re going to have to kill you.’ “ The Brooklyn native capitalized on this hard-ass image in such action films as (1989), opposite , and (1986) and its three sequels. In the series, he starred as Col. Charles “Chappy” Sinclair, a leader of dangerous rescue missions in threatening international locales. In 1959, Gossett played George Murchison in the original production of Lorraine Hansberry’s domestic tragedy , then segued to Daniel Petrie’s 1961 Columbia film adaptation along with his stage co-stars Poitier and Ruby Dee, launching his career in Hollywood. It was his eloquent portrayal as Fiddler, an older slave who teaches a young Kunta Kinte ( ) to speak English on the eight-part ABC miniseries , that earned him his first significant dose of national recognition. Eighty-five percent of the U.S. population tuned in for at least a portion of , and the finale drew more than 100 million viewers in January 1977. “All the top African-American actors were asked, and I begged to be in there,” Gossett once said. “I got the best role, I think. It was wonderful.” Gossett also starred in the critically acclaimed telefilm (1983), in which he played the assassinated Egyptian leader (Sadat’s widow, Jehan, personally chose him for the part), and he portrayed a
baseball immortal in in a 1981 telefilm. During his 60-year-plus career, Gossett excelled in a number of non-stereotypical racial roles, playing a hospital chief of staff on the 1979 ABC series and the title character Gideon Oliver, an anthropology professor, on a 1989 set of ABC Mystery Movies. He also appeared as the guardian of a 16-year-old alien (Peter Barton) on NBC’s ; as Gerak, the first leader of the Free Jaffa Nation, on the Syfy series as ‘s estranged father on CBS’ and as former vigilante Will Reeves on HBO’s . (That last one resulted in his eighth career Emmy nom.) Gossett was born on May 27, 1936, in the melting pot of Brooklyn, the son of a porter (who was adopted and raised by an Italian family) and a maid. At Abraham Lincoln High School, he was class president and starred on the baseball, track and
basketball teams; later, he would be invited to the
New York Knicks’ rookie camp. When a leg injury forced him to sit out one high school basketball season, Gossett developed an interest in acting, and his English teacher recommended him to the producers of the 1953 Broadway show . He won the lead role at age 17 over more than 400 other contenders, then received the Donaldson Award for newcomer of the year. Gossett accepted a dramatics scholarship to NYU, became pals with at the Actors Studio in New York and made his onscreen debut in 1957 on the
NBC anthology series . In 1964, he, Lola Falana and Mae Barnes sang in the cast of , a “modern minstrel show” that was produced by Mike Todd Jr. and played at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. Two years later, he co-wrote the antiwar song “Handsome Johnny” for Richie Havens’ first album, a tune the folk legend performed as the opening act at Woodstock three years later. Gossett went on to play an angry man living in a run-down apartment building in Hal Ashby’s (1970), a con artist opposite in the slavery-era (1971), a drug-dealing cutthroat in (1977), a headmaster in (1991) and a down-and-out boxer in (1992). The actor’s film résumé also included (1972), (1973), (1976), (1977), (1985), (1987), (1994), (2003), (2007), (2016), (2018), (2019) and (2023). Gossett also did excellent work in ; ; ; ; and He received an Emmy nom for each of these five projects. As a producer, he shared a Daytime Emmy for the 1998 children’s special , in which he also starred. He was active in the New York Alumni Association, a group of Big
Apple emigrants who for more than two decades reunited each year for a show at Beverly Hills High School. In 2006, Gossett founded the nonprofit Eracism Foundation, an “all out conscious offensive” to eradicate all forms of
racism by providing programs that foster cultural diversity, historical enrichment, education and antiviolence initiatives. (In the 1966, he said he was pulled over by Beverly Hills cops and handcuffed to a palm tree for no reason.) “We better take care of ourselves and one another better, otherwise nobody’s gonna win anything,” he in July 2020 during a profile. “We need each other quite desperately — for our mutual salvation.” THR Newsletters Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day More from The
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