Sidney Poitier was an American actor and the first black actor to win an Oscar. In the 1960's he was a major star who was influencisal in changing the roles and status of black actors in the film industry of the time. He was brought up in the Bahamas. He ended up in New York and joined the American Negro Theatre. His first film role was for Darryl F Zanuck and Joseph L. Mankiewicz in No Way Out. This was controversial at the time as it showed bigoted white people and intelligent black people. He went to South Africa to film Cry The Beloved Country for Zoltan Korda and experienced apartheid first hand. Blackboard jungle amongs other things was one of the firta rock and roll influenced films. For The Defiant Ones he got his first Oscar nomination. DIrector Stanley Kramer was making a political point about race relations at the time.
In 1959 he appeared in the Otto Preminger directed opera Porgy And Bess, though his singing voice was dubed as he was not a singer. By the 1960's he was a major star and with Lillies Of The Field he was the first back actor to win a best actor Oscar. To Sir with Love was a classromm drama amde in England. Perhaps his most well known role was in Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, another film from director Stanley Kramer alongside Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. At the time inter-racial marrige was illegal in some USA states. In the same year he also made In the Heat of the Night, which was one of his best films. His first film as a director was Buck and the Preacher, though his most successful film as a director was the comedy Stir Crazy. His last major film role was in Mandela and de Klerk.
