Who will win this year’s Best White Actor
Protesters, Oscar Show
Black Actors
In the Academy’s history, only a dozen performances or so have won the Oscar, four in the lead and nine in the supporting category.
Denzel Washington is the only black actor to have won two Oscars.
These performers are:
Hattie McDaniel, Gone With the Wind (1939)
Sidney Poitier, Lilies of the Field (1963)
Lou Gossett Jr., An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)
Denzel Washington, Glory (1988)
Whoopi Goldberg, Ghost (1990)
Cuba Gooding Jr., Jerry Maguire (1996)
Denzel Washington, Training Day (2001)
Halle Berry, Monster’s Ball (2001)
Jamie Foxx, Ray (2004)
Morgan Freeman, Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Octavia Spencer, The Help (2010)
Viola Davis, Fences (2016)
Mahershala Ali, Moonlight (2016)
Sidney Poitier
Sidney Poitier was the first and only black actor to win the Best Actor Oscar until 2001, when Denzel Washington joined the Best Actor ranks. A veteran of 50 years of cinema, Poitier has carried the burden of the turbulent and contradictory history of blacks in American film. After winning the 1963 Best Actor for Lilies of the Field, Poitier’s career soared to undreamed of heights with three pictures: To Sir, With Love, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and In the Heat of the Night.
When director Norman Jewison approached Poitier to star in the racially charged drama In the Heat of the Night, the actor said he would do it on one condition, that he would not have to travel south of the Mason-Dixie Line. Jewison agreed to shoot the film in Indiana rather than Mississippi where it is set. “Sideny represented such an important image in In the Heat of the Night, Jewison told the Hollywood Reporter, “and he gave the character such a sense of dignity and strength and pride. I was worried about audience reaction to this very intense black-white relationship, but of course it was well-received.” With the Civil Rights movement in full swing and the country’s big cities burning with racial hatred, poitier gracefully led the charge in smashing the color barriers of mainstream culture.
At 75, Poitier received the Honorary Oscar “for his extraordinary performances and unique presence on the screen and for representing the motion picture industry with dignity, style and intelligence throughout the world. President Frank Pierson held that “when the Academy honors Sidney Poitier, it honors itself even more.”
Oscar Host Whoopi Goldberg introduced Poitier as a presenter in the 1996 show, as the man who “made a lot of other actors possible, including myself.” She did not exaggerate. Poitier has survived, as Bogle observed “through all the vicissitudes, the uphill battles, the change in public tastes and outlooks, the demands of audiences, black and white.” For his survival and accomplishments against all odds, the Academy bestowed on Poitier an Honorary Oscar at the 2002 ceremonies. It was most appropriate that Poitier was presented with his second Oscar by Denzel Washington, who, a few minutes later, would make history by winning the Best Actor for Training Day.
Black Nominees
Poitier, Washington, and Foxx comprise about 4 percent of the Best Actors. The percentage of African American Best Actor nominees is slightly higher: 6 percent.
They are:
Sidney Poitier, The Defiant Ones (1958)
James Earl Jones, The Great White Hope (1970)
Paul Winfield, Sounder (1972)
Dexter Gordon, Round’ Midnight (1986)
Morgan Freeman, Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Denzel Washington, Malcolm X (1992), The Hurricane (1999), Training Day (2001), Fences (2016)
Lawrence Fishburn, What’s Love Got to Do With It (1993)
Will Smith, Ali (2001)
Don Cheadle, Hotel Rwanda (2004)
Supporting Actors
It took 33 years after the creation of the supporting acting categories (in 1936) for the first black performer to be nominated in that league: Rupert Crosse for The Reivers in 1969.
Four black actors have won Supporting Oscars, all over the past twenty-five years:
Louis Gossett Jr., An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)
Denzel Washington, Glory (1989)
Cuba Gooding Jr., Jerry Maguire (1996)
Morgan Freeman, Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Mahershala Ali, Moonlight (2016)
The black supporting actors amount to a small percentage of all supporting nominees. They are:
Rupert Crosse, The Reivers (1969)
Howard E. Rollins, Ragtime (1981)
Adolph Caesar, A Soldier’s Story (1984)
Morgan Freeman, Street Smart (1989)
Jaye Davidson, The Crying Game (1992)
Samuel Jackson, Pulp Fiction (1994)
Michael Clarke Duncan, The Green Mile (1999).
Jamie Foxx, Collateral (2004)
Jaye Davidson, born in California but reared in England, was working as a fashion assistant when director Neil Jordan spotted him for the pivotal role in his psycho-political mystery, The Crying Game. The focus of the film’s shocking revelations, Davidson plays the transsexual lover of a British soldier-hostage (Forrest Whitaker) and then the lover of the Irish terrorist (Stephen Rae).
If you want to know more about this issue, please read my book, All About Oscar: The History and Politics of the Academy Awards (Continuum International, paperback 2004).
