Sidney Poitier, the legendary star who was the primary Black man to win the Oscar for Greatest Actor, has died at 94, Bahamas Overseas Minister Fred Mitchell confirmed to CBS Information Friday. Mitchell was informed of Poitier's loss of life by the household however had no different particulars. Poitier, who held twin U.S. and Bahamian nationality, was "an icon, a hero, a mentor, a fighter, a nationwide treasure," Deputy Prime Minister Chester Cooper mentioned on his official Fb web page. Poitier's life was a sequence of "firsts." In 1958, he was the primary Black actor nominated for an Oscar as Greatest Actor for his position as an escaped convict chained to Tony Curtis in "The Defiant Ones." When he was nominated once more in 1964, for "Lilies of the Subject," he took dwelling the Academy Award. He was not solely the primary Black actor to take action, he remained the one one till 2002. He was additionally the primary Black man to kiss a White girl in a film, 1965's "A Patch of Blue." He was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom -- the nation's highest civilian honor -- by Barack Obama in 2009. Poitier informed CBS Information his profession selections had been much less about being "first" and extra concerning the picture of his characters. He wouldn't, he informed Lesley Stahl in 2013, play somebody who was immoral or merciless. "Should you undergo my profession, you will discover that I did not. I did not ever." "I didn't go into the movie enterprise to be symbolized as another person's imaginative and prescient of me," Poitier informed Stahl. He mentioned he wouldn't take any half "that displays negatively on my father, my mom and my values. "My father was a tomato farmer. There's the phrase that claims she or he labored their fingers to the bone, properly, that is my dad. And he was an excellent man." The youngest of seven youngsters, Sidney Poitier was born three months untimely whereas his Bahamian mother and father had been in Miami to promote tomatoes. Unsure whether or not he would survive, his dad bought a tiny casket, whereas his mom consulted a palm reader . . . "The girl took her hand and began chatting with my mom: 'Don't be concerned about your son. He'll survive'," Poitier recalled. "And these had been her phrases, she mentioned: 'He'll stroll with kings.'" And it got here true: "Every little thing she mentioned, together with strolling with kings, yeah."
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