American Hollywood legend, film actor, Sidney Poitier Dies Aged 94

Sidney L. Poitier KBE February 20, 1927 – January 6, 2022) was an American actor, film director, activist, and ambassador is dead.
The death of the Hollywood star was confirmed to the BBC by the office of Fred Mitchell, the Bahamas’ Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Poitier was born in Miami, Florida. Because he was two months premature, his family did not think he would survive, and his dad even prepared to bury him in a shoebox.

He broke racial barriers in Hollywood. His appearance in “The Defiant Ones” in 1958 earned him his first Oscar nomination – in itself a historic achievement for a black man in a lead category at the time.

In 1964, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, becoming the first Black male actor to win the award for role in “Lilies of the Field”. 
Five years later he went one better, taking the glory for Lilies of the Field, in which he played a handyman who helps German nuns to build a chapel in the desert.

He also received two Academy Award nominations, 10 Golden Globes nominations, two Primetime Emmy Awards nominations, six BAFTA nominations, eight Laurel nominations, and one Screen Actors Guild Awards nomination. 
Poitier was one of the last surviving major stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema and in 2020, became the oldest living and earliest surviving male Academy Award winner until his own death in 2022. From 1997 to 2007, Poitier served as Bahamian Ambassador to Japan. 
Poitier was also known for his activism work on human rights issues
On his Twitter handle, former US President Barack Obama said Poitier “epitomised dignity and grace”
Speaking on a live Facebook stream on Friday, The Prime Minister of the Bahamas, Philip Davis said: “Our whole Bahamas grieves. But even as we mourn, we celebrate the life of a great Bahamian.”
Davis added: “His strength of character, his willingness to stand up and be counted and the way he plotted and navigated his life’s journey.
“The boy who moved from the tomato farm to become a waiter in the United States, a young man who not only taught himself to read and write, but who made the expression of words and thoughts and feelings central to his career.”