The film world wasn’t ready for it yet. That’s what Louis Gossett Jr. said. agree about his historic Oscar win in 1983: the first black actor ever to win in the best supporting actor category. And by that he was referring to the year after the Academy awarded him for his play as the tough drill sergeant in An Officer and a Gentleman, when none of the film studios asked him for a great role in a new production. However, Gossett was never shy about work: he was already a much sought-after television actor at that time, especially for his Emmy-winning role as the enslaved ‘Fiddler’ in the miniseries Roots, the slavery family epic and ratings cannon that became part of the collective American memory in the 1970s. And later the supply of film roles would also increase.
Especially for the role in An Officer and a Gentleman, starring star Richard Gere as a rogue aspiring soldier, Gossett was trained on a real army base: how best to tear down and build up those recruits. “A hard man with a heart of gold,” is how Gere remembered his colleague: on the set of An Officer and a Gentleman Gossett avoided normal social contact in order to remain as deeply as possible in his toxic role.
School theater
Louis Cameron Gossett Jr. grew up in Coney Island, Brooklyn. Father was a doorman, mother a nurse. It was a sports injury that led their athletic son to enroll in the school theater, where his qualities were immediately noticed. Already at the age of 17, Gossett was on Broadway, in a production Take a Giant Step (1953). He also turned down an offer from the professional basketball team New York Knicks to be on the set of A Raisin in the Sonhis cinema debut from 1961.
Gossett could be an intimidating presence, with his bald skull, piercing gaze and quick tongue. And would later reprise his Oscar-winning role as the implacable military authority in Iron Eagle (1986), plus the three sequels to the fighter pilot action series, which rode on the success of Top Gun. For the miniseries Roots, based on the novel by Alex Haley, the makers asked him for a more obliging role: the musical slave Fiddler, who mentors Kunta Kinte, the more rebellious hero of the series. At first Gossett was reluctant to act ‘a kind of Uncle Tom’, but later he changed his mind: that Fiddler was also a survivor in his own way.
Musical
The actor himself was also musically gifted: as a folk/blues singer, Gossett, who performed in the cafes of the New York folk mecca Greenwich Village, released an album (From Me to You, 1970). He also wrote the anti-war song for Richie Havens Handsome Johnny.
In his memoir published in 2010, An Actor and a Gentleman, Gossett highlighted the racism and opposition he experienced in his career and life. Once, while walking through Beverly Hills at night, he was stopped by a police officer and handcuffed to a tree. He was also paid less than his white colleagues on set. Gossett, who eventually appeared in more than 200 television series and feature films, remained active until shortly before his death. Earlier this year he could be seen in the new cinema adaptation of The Color Purple. The actor was married three times and leaves behind two sons.
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