Louis Gossett Jr., the tough guy with sensitive side who won Oscar for his portrayal of a steely sergeant in An Officer and a Gentleman and Emmy for his performance as a compassionate slave in the miniseries Roots, died Friday. He was 87.

In a statement his family said, “It is with our heartfelt regret to confirm our beloved father passed away this morning. We would like to thank everyone for their condolences at this time. Please respect the family’s privacy during this difficult time.”

The cause of death is unknown, but Gossett announced in 2010 that he had prostate cancer.

With his bald pate and athlete’s physique, Gossett was intimidating in a wide array of roles, in Taylor Hackford’s Officer and a Gentleman (1982), where as Gunnery Sgt. Emil Foley he treats Richard Gere’s character mercilessly at an officer candidate school and gets into a memorable martial arts fight.

He was the second Black man to win an acting Oscar, albeit Supporting one, after Sidney Poitier in 1964.

The tall Gossett trained for 30 days at the Marine Corps Recruitment Division, an adjunct of Camp Pendleton north of San Diego. “I knew I had to put myself through at least some degree of all-encompassing transformation,” Gossett wrote in his 2010 biography, An Actor and a Gentleman.

Douglas Day Stewart’s original script called for Gere’s Zack Mayo to beat up Foley.

“The Marines changed it,” Gossett recalled. “They said that an enlisted man would never beat up a drill sergeant. We’ll tear the place up unless you change it. They said, ‘If you don’t do this well, Mr. Gossett, we’re going to have to kill you.’ “

The Brooklyn naive showed his hard-ass image in action films like The Punisher (1989), opposite Dolph Lundgren, and Iron Eagle (1986) and its 3 sequels. In the Iron Eagle series, he starred as Col. Charles “Chappy” Sinclair, a leader of dangerous rescue missions in threatening international locales.

In 1959, Gossett played George Murchison in the original production of Lorraine Hansberry’s domestic tragedy A Raisin in the Sun, then segued to Daniel Petrie’s 1961 Columbia film adaptation along with his stage co-stars Poitier and Ruby Dee, launching his career in Hollywood.

“All the top African-American actors were asked, and I begged to be in there,” Gossett once said. “I got the best role, I think. It was wonderful.”

Gossett also starred in the critically acclaimed telefilm Sadat (1983), in which he played the assassinated Egyptian leader (Sadat’s widow, Jehan, personally chose him for the part), and he portrayed a baseball immortal in Don’t Look Back: The Story of Leroy “Satchel” Paige in a 1981 telefilm.

During his 60-year-plus career, Gossett excelled in a number of non-stereotypical racial roles, playing a hospital chief of staff on the 1979 ABC series The Lazarus Syndrome and the title character Gideon Oliver, an anthropology professor, on a 1989 set of ABC Mystery Movies.

He also appeared as the guardian of a 16-year-old alien (Peter Barton) on NBC’s The Powers of Matthew Star; as Gerak, the first leader of the Free Jaffa Nation, on the Syfy series Stargate SG-1; as Halley Berry’s estranged father on CBS’ Extant; and as former vigilante Will Reeves on HBO’s Watchmen. (That last one resulted in his eighth career Emmy nom.)

When a leg injury forced him to sit out one high school basketball season, Gossett developed an interest in acting, and his English teacher recommended him to the producers of the 1953 Broadway show Take a Giant Step. He won the lead role at age 17 over more than 400 other contenders, then received the Donaldson Award for newcomer of the year.

Gossett accepted a dramatics scholarship to NYU, became pals with James Dean at the Actors Studio in New York and made his onscreen debut in 1957 on the NBC anthology series The Big Story.

In 1964, he, Lola Falana and Mae Barnes sang in the cast of America, Be Seated, a “modern minstrel show” that was produced by Mike Todd Jr. and played at the World’s Fair in New York.

Two years later, he co-wrote the antiwar song “Handsome Johnny” for Richie Havens’ first album, a tune the folk legend performed as the opening act at Woodstock three years later.

Gossett went on to play an angry man living in a run-down apartment building in Hal Ashby’s The Landlord (1970), a con artist opposite James Garner in the slavery-era Skin Game (1971), a drug-dealing cutthroat in The Deep (1977), a headmaster in Toy Soldiers (1991) and a down-and-out boxer in Diggstown (1992).

Gossett also did excellent work in The Sentry Collection Presents Ben Vereen: His Roots; Backstairs at the White House; Palmerstown, U.S.A.; A Gathering of Old Men; and Touched by an Angel. He received an Emmy nom for each of these five projects.

As a producer, he shared a Daytime Emmy for the 1998 children’s special In His Father’s Shoes, in which he also starred.

He was active in the New York Alumni Association, a group of Big Apple emigrants who for more than two decades reunited each year for a show at Beverly Hills High School.

Eracism Foundation

In 2006, Gossett founded the nonprofit Eracism Foundation, an “all out conscious offensive” to eradicate all forms of racism by providing programs that foster cultural diversity, historical enrichment, education and antiviolence initiatives. (In the 1966, he said he was pulled over by Beverly Hills cops and handcuffed to a palm tree for no reason.)

“We better take care of ourselves and one another better, otherwise nobody’s gonna win anything,” he said in 2020 CBS Sunday Morning profile. “We need each other quite desperately — for our mutual salvation.”