Louis Gossett Jr., the first Black man to win a supporting actor Oscar and an Emmy winner for his role in the seminal TV miniseries Roots, has died. He was 87. Gossett's first cousin Neal L. Gossett told The Associated Press that the actor died Thursday, March 29, night in Santa Monica, California. No cause of death was revealed.
Louis Gossett always thought of his early career as a reverse Cinderella story, with success finding him from an early age and propelling him forward, toward his Academy Award for An Officer and a Gentleman. He earned his first acting credit in his Brooklyn high school's production of You Can't Take It with You while he was sidelined from the basketball team with an injury. "I was hooked – and so was my audience," he wrote in his 2010 memoir An Actor and a Gentleman.
His English teacher urged him to go into Manhattan to try out for Take a Giant Step. He got the part and made his Broadway debut in 1953 at age 16. "I knew too little to be nervous," Gossett wrote. "In retrospect, I should have been scared to death as I walked onto that stage, but I wasn't."
Gossett attended New York University on a basketball and drama scholarship. He was soon acting and singing on TV shows. Gossett became friendly with James Dean and studied acting with Marilyn Monroe, Martin Landau and Steve McQueen at an offshoot of the Actors Studio taught by Frank Silvera.
In 1959, Gossett received critical acclaim for his role in the Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun along with Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee and Diana Sands. He went on to become a star on Broadway, replacing Billy Daniels in Golden Boy with Sammy Davis Jr. in 1964.
Gossett went to Hollywood for the first time in 1961 to make the film version of A Raisin in the Sun. He had bitter memories of that trip, staying in a cockroach-infested motel that was one of the few places to allow Black people. In 1968, he returned to Hollywood for a major role in Companions in Nightmare, a made-for-TV movie that starred Melvyn Douglas, Anne Baxter and Patrick O'Neal.
Louis Cameron Gossett was born on May 27, 1936, in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, New York, to Louis Sr., a porter, and Hellen, a nurse. He later added Jr. to his name to honor his father. Gossett broke through on the small screen as Fiddler in the groundbreaking 1977 miniseries Roots, which depicted the atrocities of slavery on TV. The sprawling cast included Ben Vereen, LeVar Burton and John Amos.
Gossett became the third Black Oscar nominee in the supporting actor category in 1983. He won for his performance as the intimidating Marine drill instructor in An Officer and a Gentleman opposite Richard Gere and Debra Winger. He also won a Golden Globe for the same role.
"More than anything, it was a huge affirmation of my position as a Black actor," he wrote in his memoir. "The Oscar gave me the ability of being able to choose good parts in movies like Enemy Mine, Sadat and Iron Eagle," Gossett said in Dave Karger's 2024 book 50 Oscar Nights. But he said winning an Oscar didn't change the fact that all his roles were supporting ones.
He said his statue was in storage. "I'm going to donate it to a library so I don't have to keep an eye on it," he said in the book. "I need to be free of it."
Gossett appeared in such TV movies as The Story of Satchel Paige, Backstairs at the White House, The Josephine Baker Story, for which he won another Golden Globe, and Roots Revisited. He played an obstinate patriarch in the 2023 remake of The Color Purple.
Gossett is survived by sons Satie, a producer-director from his second marriage, and Sharron, a chef whom he adopted after seeing the 7-year-old in a TV segment on children in desperate situations. Gossett's first marriage to Hattie Glascoe was annulled. His second, to Christina Mangosing, ended in divorce in 1975 as did his third to actor Cyndi James-Reese in 1992.