Oscar-Winning Actor Louis Gossett Jr. Dies at 87

Louis Gossett Jr., the first Black performer to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, has died at the age of 87.

Gossett made his Broadway debut at the age of 17 in the 1953 drama Take a Giant Step. Among his other New York stage credits include the original productions of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (as George Murchison), Jean Genet’s The Blacks (opposite Maya Angelou, Cicely Tyson, James Earl Jones, and Roscoe Lee Brown), Langston Hughes’s Tambourines to Glory, the musical adaptation of Clifford Odets’s Golden Boy, and the long-running revival of Chicago, where he was an early replacement in the role of Billy Flynn.

The actor earned most of his fame on the big and small screen, notably playing George in the film of A Raisin in the Sun, Fiddler in television miniseries Roots, which earned him an Emmy Award, Peter Yates’s The Deep, and Taylor Hackford’s An Officer and a Gentleman, where he played Sergeant Foley. For his performance in the latter, Gossett won his Oscar, becoming the second Black man in history to win for acting. He also won a Golden Globe Award for this turn. Additional credits among his five-decade career include Travels With My Aunt, Jaws 3-D, The Deep, Toy Soldiers, and The Punisher. On television, his episodic work ranged from The Partridge Family and The Mod Squad to Family Guy and Madam Secretary.

Gossett never retired; in 2019, he earned an Emmy nomination for his performance in the HBO series Watchmen, and in 2023, played the role of Ol’ Mister in the musical remake of The Color Purple. He had at least four other films in various stages of post-production, awaiting release.