Oscar winner broke barrier in ‘Officer and a Gentleman’
LOS ANGELES — 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,” died Friday in Santa Monica, California. He was 87.
No cause of death was given, according to a statement from the family.
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.”
Gossett broke through on the small screen as Fiddler in the 1977 miniseries “Roots,” which depicted the atrocities of slavery on TV. The cast included Ben Vereen, LeVar Burton, Leslie Uggams 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.
He had 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 at age 16 in 1953.
Gossett attended New York University on a basketball and drama scholarship. He was soon acting
and singing on TV shows hosted by David Susskind, Ed Sullivan, Red Buttons, Merv Griffin, Jack Paar and Steve Allen. 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.
Gossett made a series of guest appearances on such shows as “Bonanza,” “The Rockford Files,” “The Mod Squad,” “McCloud” and
“The Partridge Family.”
Louis Cameron Gossett was born May 27, 1936, in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, to Louis Sr., a porter, and Hellen, a nurse. He later added Jr. to his name to honor his father.
“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.”
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 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.