Sidney Poitier was not expected to survive, as he was born 3 months early.

After his father bought him a coffin, a fortune-teller told his mother, "Don't worry, your son will survive, and walk with kings," he himself told CBS news correspondent Leslie Stahl in 2013.

Poitier was born in Miami, Florida - after 7 children - on February 20, 1927, where his father was a tomato grower trading between Florida and the Bahamas.

Sir Sidney Poitier is a Hollywood legend, and the star of African American cinema who blew up a soft cinematic revolution in the face of endemic racism in America, which he started in 1949, and he is still only 22 years old, and Amon Warman, editor of Empire magazine, told the BBC. (BBC) Poitier "tacked on racism head-on", and critic Peter Bradshaw said Poitier "quietly contributed to the revolution".

After a career that lasted 71 years and the birth of 6 children, 8 grandchildren and 3 great-grandchildren, Sidney Poitier died at his home in Los Angeles on the sixth of last January, at the age of 94.

devotion of respect

Sidney Poitier "a film star by nature, very handsome, well-spoken, and has a sweet, melodious voice," says Bradshaw.

His elegant image and proud, moral on-screen archetype made him rise to the top and become the first black movie star in Hollywood, insisting from the start that blacks portray erect, well-educated men, often stronger in character than the white people around them.

So he told reporter Leslie Stahl, "My career has attested that I've never played an immoral person."

His high-end roles helped convince audiences in the 1950s and 1960s that blacks were not only servants, they could also be doctors, teachers, and investigators.

In 1967 alone, he played Philadelphia homicide detective Virgil Tibbs, tasked with helping a small Mississippi police chief solve a murder mystery, in In the Heat of the Night, based on John's detective novel. Paul, winner of 5 Academy Awards.

Also, he portrayed a young doctor defeating the parents of his white fiancée, a dogmatic mother (Katherine Hepburn), and a known liberal father (Spencer Tracy), in the two-Oscar-winning Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

He also played a young engineer, Mark Thackeray, who was forced to teach a disorderly class, and succeeded in forcing pupils to learn respect in To Sir, with Love.

The fastest and most famous slap in the history of cinema

Poitier became a legend who inspired audiences, through starring roles in more than 50 films, as well as his life as a series of "firsts".

In 1959, he was the first black man to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as an escaped prisoner in The Defiant Ones, which received 9 Academy Award nominations.

He was the first black man to kiss a white woman in the history of cinema, in the movie "A Patch of Blue" in 1965. And when he won two Oscars and a Golden Globe for Best Actor, for his role in the movie "Lilies of the Field" in 1964, he was not only the first black actor to have it, he remained the only one to snap it up until 2002.

He was the first black man to slap a white feudal man, in the movie "Heat of the Night." He told Stahl about the circumstances of this slap. He mentioned that before he played the role, he asked the producing company to change the scene in the contract, saying, "If he slaps me, I will slap him immediately." .

Considering it "one of those great moments in the film, when you slap a arrogant person, as he slapped you", Poitier explains this by saying, "I knew I would humiliate every black person in the world, if I didn't."

From dishwashing to global

Until the age of 15, Poitier lived with his family in their native country, the Bahamas, but his early birth while they were in Miami automatically granted him US citizenship.

At the age of 16, he headed to New York in search of an acting opportunity, although he only attended two years of school.

After the disastrous experience he had at the American Negro Theatre, because he could not read the text, he joined the army for a short time, then decided to wash dishes in a restaurant, where he met a Jewish waiter who helped him teach, until he succeeded in trying Performance of the American Negro Theatre.

In 1950, he had his first starring role in No Way Out, as a doctor confronting the racism of a prisoner, and by 1967, he was among the top 10 box office stars in Hollywood, and among the top 10 men of that year.

In the 1970s, he directed films such as "Uptown Saturday Night" 1974 and "Stir Crazy" 1980. In the late eighties and early nineties, he starred in "Shoot to Kill" 1988, and Robert Redford co-starred in the 1992 movie "Sneakers".

In 1997, he made a TV movie about the life of Nelson Mandela.

Then he devoted himself to authoring, and wrote an autobiography issued in 2000, entitled "The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Biography", detailing his experiences as an actor during the civil rights era, and published it by saying, "I was one of the young black actors who became unwanted, and I was accused of being a provocateur." riots."

good guy

Sidney Poitier was awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II in 1974. In 1995 he was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors.

In 1999, he was ranked 22nd among male actors on the American Film Institute's list.

In 2002 he was awarded an Honorary Academy Award, in recognition of his outstanding achievements "as an artist and as a human being".

In addition to his cinematic leadership, Poitier was the ambassador of his native country, the Bahamas, to Japan for 10 years (1997-2007), and at the same time he was the ambassador of the Bahamas to UNESCO.

In 2009 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.

For his part, President Joe Biden praised Sidney Poitier in a statement issued by the White House, describing him as "a unique and philanthropic representative of his generation who provided so much dignity, strength, and value that changed the world on and off screen."

This comes in the wake of Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton's praise of Poitier, who was asked by reporter Leslie Stahl, saying who are you?, and he smiled and said, "I'm a good person."