Sidney Poitier at the 38th Charlie Chaplin Award gala, held at the Alice Tully Hall at the Lincoln Center in New York City on May 2, 2011. Photo by Tamara Dunn on Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. Hollywood royalty and elder statesman of the silver screen, Bahamian-American actor Sidney Poitier, whose trailblazing work in the 1950s and '60s helped break colour barriers, shifting the lens through which Black people were perceived and paving the way for other Black actors to make their mark, died on January 7 at the age of 94. BREAKING: Beloved Bahamian actor and former ambassador Sir Sidney Poitier has died. He was 94. A Broadway play about the trailblazing career of the visionary actor was announced last month. Sir Sidney's death was confirmed by Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell. pic.twitter.com/WVJFlog3tC — Eyewitness News Bahamas (@ewnewsbahamas) January 7, 2022 On learning of Poitier's passing, Prime Minister of The Bahamas Philip Davis addressed the nation, saying, “Even as we mourn, we celebrate the life of a great Bahamian, a cultural icon, an actor and film director, an entrepreneur, human and civil rights activist, and latterly, a diplomat.” Poitier was all those things and more, but Davis also praised who the man was at his core—”his strength of character, his willingness to stand up and be counted, and the way he plotted and navigated his life's journey.” The youngest of seven children, Poitier was born prematurely in Miami on February 20, 1927, to Bahamian parents–farmers who traveled regularly to the States to sell their produce. Though an American citizen, he grew up in the Bahamas, only moving to the United States when he was 15. After working as a dishwasher and thereafter at a veteran's hospital in New York during World War II as part of the U.S. Army, Poitier eventually joined the Harlem-based American Negro Theater and found his calling. Sidney Poitier in “A Raisin in the Sun”, New York, 1959. Photo by Gordon Parks via bswise on Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. His first major film role was “No Way Out” (1950), in which he played a doctor attending to two white racist patients; one dies, prompting a race riot. The film was banned in the southern United States. Poitier followed this up with the breakthrough role of a high school student in the 1955 film “Blackboard Jungle” (1955). He also won critical acclaim for his work in “Porgy and Bess” (1959), and “A Raisin in the Sun” (1961). Poitier was pushing through in such roles during the turbulent civil rights movement in the United States. In 1958, Poitier and Tony Curtis played escaped convicts in “The Defiant Ones”, which earned them both Best Actor Oscar nominations (in Poitier's case, the first for a Black male actor). He didn't win, but the nomination alone was groundbreaking, and the excellence of his performance was acknowledged by the British Academy Film Awards when he won the BAFTA for Best Foreign Actor that year. His recognition across the pond made him a natural choice for his role in the British film “Cry, the Beloved Country”. Shot in South Africa during apartheid, Poitier became even more resolute in his activism, using his fame to press for the equal treatment of Black people, even calling out the press for its unidimensional portrayal of him—and by extension other African-Americans—as simply Black. “I'm a relatively intelligent man,” he told them. “There are many aspects to my personality that you can explore, I think, very constructively—but you sit here and ask me […] questions that fall continually within the Negroness of my life. You ask me questions that pertain to the narrow scope of the summer riots [of 1967]. I am artist, man, American, contemporary…I am an awful lot of things, so I wish you would pay me the respect due.” The rebuff was in keeping with the dedication with which, throughout the course of his long career, he strove to bring life, dimension and humanity to the characters he portrayed. Prior to Poitier's time, the representation of Black characters in Hollywood films was problematic, being primarily portrayed as either servants or criminals. In 1963, Poitier starred in “Lilies of the Field”, for which he won the 1964 Academy Award, the first Oscar ever presented to a Black actor in a leading role. By 1967, towards the end of the U.S. civil rights movement, he did three pivotal films—“To Sir, with Love”, “Guess Who's Coming to Dinner”, and “In the Heat of the Night”, that examnined the issue of race and the prejudices Black Americans were faced with on a daily basis. Having been voted the top box office star of 1968, by the 1970s Poitier spread his creative wings and ventured into directing.