Starred in ‘Midnight Run,’ ‘Live and Let Die’ and ‘Alien’
Yaphet Kotto, the commanding actor who brought tough magnetism and stately gravitas to films including the James Bond movie “Live and Let Die” and “Alien,” has died. He was 81.
Kotto’s wife, Tessie Sinahon, announced his death Monday in a Facebook post. She said he died Monday in the Philippines. Kotto’s agent, Ryan Goldhar, confirmed Kotto’s death.
“You played a villain on some of your movies but for me you’re a real hero and to a lot of people,” wrote Sinahon.
Standing 6-foot-3-inches, Yaphet Frederick Kotto was a regular and compelling presence across films, television and Broadway beginning with the films “Nothing But a Man” (1964) and “The Thomas Crown Affair” (1968). He made his stage debut in a Boston production of “Othello.” In 1969, he replaced James Earl Jones in the Pulitzer-winning “The Great White Hope” on Broadway. His big-screen breakthrough came as Lieutenant Pope in 1972’s “Across 110th Street.”
Raised in the Bronx and a descendent of Cameroonian royalty on his father’s side, Kotto was best known for his infuriated FBI agent in “Midnight Run” who has his badge stolen by Robert De Niro, the James Bond villain Mr. Big in “Live and Let Die” and the technician Dennis Parker in 1979’s “Alien.”
“He’s one of those actors who deserved more than the parts he got,” wrote director Ava Duvernay on Twitter. “But he took those parts and made them wonderful all the same.”
Kotto was nominated for an Emmy for his performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the 1977 television movie “Raid on Entebbe.” In
Paul Schrader’s 1978
“Blue Collar,” about Detroit auto workers, he starred alongside Richard Pryor and Harvey Keitel as the ex-convict Smokey James.
Kotto also co-starred in the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger action film “The Running Man” and played Al Giardello from 1993 to 1999 on the NBC series “Homicide: Life on the Street.”
“Memories and respect for Yaphet Kotto, whose film career was legend even before he came to Baltimore to grace our television drama,” said David Simon, author of the book that launched the “Homicide” show. “But for me, he’ll always be Al Giardello, the unlikeliest Sicilian, gently pulling down the office blinds to glower at detectives in his squadroom.”
Kotto sometimes struggled with being typecast as a detective, and he lamented how many of his characters died.
“I’m always called powerful, bulky or imposing,” Kotto told the Baltimore Sun in 1993. “Or they say I fill up a room. I’m a 200pound, 6-foot-3-inch
Black guy. And I think I have this image of a monster. It’s very difficult.”
“I want to try to play a much more sensitive man. A family man,” he added. “There is an aspect of Black people’s lives that is not running or jumping.”
Kotto is survived by his wife and six children.
Dumb: Ted Cruz’s trip to Cancun.
Dumber: 43 states wanting to restrict voting rights.
Dumbest: the electorate. – Frank J. Sioli, Sr., Miami
MARCH 17
On the issue of guns, John Kavanagh has a record unblemished by sanity.
Indeed, a scroll through Vote Smart, the nonpartisan, nonprofit voter information clearinghouse, suggests the Arizona state lawmaker has never met a pro-gun measure he didn’t like. That includes bills authorizing concealed carry in public buildings, firearms sales without background checks and even one prohibiting the state from keeping records on gun owners.
So, yes, the man loves guns. The man thinks everybody should have access to guns.
But he doesn’t think everybody should vote.
Your modern Republican, you see, considers ballots more dangerous than bullets. “There’s a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans,” Kavanagh told CNN last week. “Democrats value as many people as possible voting, and they’re willing to risk fraud. Republicans are more concerned about fraud, so we don’t mind putting security measures in that won’t let everybody vote — but everybody shouldn’t be voting …”
You may read that over again if you wish, but it
won’t become less ugly. And if you’re unclear on who the “everybody” is that shouldn’t be voting, well . . . welcome to America. Hope you enjoy your visit. If you get down to Miami, be sure to try the stone crabs.
The rest of us are confronted with a party made so desperate by its dwindling prospects of winning free and fair elections that it acts with increasing
boldness to make them unfree and unfair. We keep seeing Republicans do as Kavanagh did, i.e., give the game away, accidentally tell the truth of their alleged concern about so-called voter fraud that they know does not exist. In fact, just days before Kavanagh’s bout of rhetorical diarrhea, former senatorial candidate Lauren Witzke warned that, without passage of votersuppression bills, “We will never win again.”
Well, you know what? It is time to give her — to give Kavanagh, to give all of them — exactly what they fear. Make it impossible for them to ever win again by spouting hateful extremism and cockamamie conspiracies. Make it impossible for them to ever win again by racing to the bottom on a toxic sludge of fear mongering, finger pointing and lies. Make it impossible for them to ever win again by gerrymandering. Make it impossible for them to ever win again without crafting thoughtful positions and intelligent policies with broad appeal.
To do that, Democrats and everyone else who believes in the will of the people must demand passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the For The People Act, now making their way through Congress. And they must get a move on, because Republicans are legislating too, introducing over 250 state laws designed to restrict “everybody” from voting.
It is a startling fact, but a fact nevertheless, that we are living through the only time this country has ever tried democracy — one person, one vote. Which is to say, the 56 years since the Voting Rights Act was signed. Now, one party has decided democracy isn’t to its taste and is working to get rid of it.
But what we need to get rid of is “leaders” who do not venerate America’s core mission, its truths held self-evident. Our civic life must be scrubbed clean of crackpots, scoundrels and dullards who drag our most sacred values through the muck.
So forget voter suppression. It’s time for some politician suppression. In America, you see, everybody should have the right to vote, period. But there is one thing not everybody should have the privilege to do.
And that’s lead.