The Oscar winner was a trailblazer who was happy to share the spotlight – and part of a disappearing class of Black acting nobility
Preparation went out the window when Louis Gossett Jr became the third Black person to win an Oscar, in 1983, for his supporting role in An Officer and a Gentleman. He had planned to accept the award with his seven-year-old son, Satie – but the boy got stage fright at the last minute and stayed rooted to his seat. The speech Gossett had in mind? “It’s no use,” he told the capacity crowd at LA’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. “It’s all gone.” So he kept things short and sweet, thanking his family before pivoting to his fellow nominees – a tough crowd that included James Mason and John Lithgow. “All you other four guys,” Gossett said, raising his statuette, “this is ours.”
That was Gossett in essence: magnanimous, dignified, always hitting the mark. After the announcement of his death on Friday, at age 87, Gossett was remembered as a trailblazer who never hesitated to share his spotlight with equally deserving people and causes. Wendell Pierce, of HBO’s The Wire, saluted Gossett as “one of the great American actors of our generation”, while the Oscar-nominated Rustin star Colman Domingo called him “open and generous” and “kind beyond measure”.
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