Sidney Poitier
Birthday: 1927-02-20
Place of Birth: Miami, Florida, USA
Biography: Sidney Poitier KBE (February 20, 1927 – January 6, 2022) was a Bahamian and American actor, film director, and diplomat. In 1964, he became the first black actor and first Bahamian to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, for Lilies of the Field. Other accolades include two competitive Golden Globe Awards, a competitive British Academy of Film and Television Arts award (BAFTA), and a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album. Major films featuring Poitier in a starring role include Blackboard Jungle (1955), The Defiant Ones (1958), To Sir, with Love (1967), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), In the Heat of the Night (1967), Sneakers (1992), and The Jackal (1997). Later in his career, he turned to directing with features such as Buck and the Preacher (1972), Uptown Saturday Night (1974), Stir Crazy (1980), and Ghost Dad (1990). At the time of his death, Poitier was one of the last major stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema.
Movies
Duel at Diablo
In Apache territory, a supply Army column heads for the next fort, an ex-scout searches for the kill...
View Movie
Sneakers
When shadowy U.S. intelligence agents blackmail a reformed computer hacker and his eccentric team of...
View Movie
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
A couple's attitudes are challenged when their daughter brings home a fiancé who is black....
View Movie
The Greatest Story Ever Told
From his birth in Bethlehem to his death and eventual resurrection, the life of Jesus Christ is give...
View Movie
In the Heat of the Night
African-American Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of murder by Bi...
View Movie
Porgy and Bess
In the early 1900s, the fictional Catfish Row section of Charleston, South Carolina serves as home t...
View Movie
The Jackal
Hired by a powerful member of the Russian mafia to avenge an FBI sting that left his brother dead, a...
View Movie
The Defiant Ones
Two convicts—one white, one black—escape while chained to each other....
View Movie
The Wilby Conspiracy
Having spent 10 years in prison for nationalist activities, Shack Twala is finally ordered released ...
View Movie
Shoot to Kill
When a cunning murderer vanishes into the rugged mountains of the Pacific Northwest, pursuing FBI ag...
View Movie
Buck and the Preacher
A wagon master and a con-man preacher help freed slaves dogged by cheap-labor agents out West....
View Movie
Blackboard Jungle
Richard Dadier is a teacher at North Manual High School, an inner-city school where many of the pupi...
View Movie
To Sir, with Love
A British Guianese engineer starts a job as a high school teacher in London’s East End, where his un...
View Movie
A Patch of Blue
A blind, uneducated white girl is befriended by a black man, who becomes determined to help her esca...
View Movie
Paris Blues
During the 1960s, two American jazz musicians living in Paris meet and fall in love with two America...
View Movie
Little Nikita
An FBI agent works to uncover an all-American family as Soviet sleeper agents, and gets caught up in...
View Movie
Pressure Point
An African-American prison psychiatrist finds the boundaries of his professionalism sorely tested wh...
View Movie
Roy Orbison and Friends: A Black and White Night
Recorded live at the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles, Roy is joined by an eclectic ensemble of rock and...
View Movie
They Call Me Mister Tibbs!
A police detective's investigation of a prostitute's murder points to his best friend....
View Movie
Edge of the City
A male army deserter and a black male dock worker join forces against a corrupt manager, in a corrup...
View Movie
No Way Out
Two hoodlum brothers are brought into hospital for gunshot wounds, and when one dies, the other accu...
View Movie
Uptown Saturday Night
Two blue-collar buddies search the underworld for a winning lottery ticket lost in a nightclub holdu...
View Movie
Let's Do It Again
Clyde Williams and Billy Foster are a couple of blue-collar workers in Atlanta who have promised to ...
View Movie
A Raisin in the Sun
Walter Lee Younger is a young man struggling with his station in life. Sharing a tiny apartment with...
View Movie
A Piece of the Action
How does retired cop Joshua Burke (James Earl Jones) get two career criminals, Manny Durrell (Sidney...
View Movie
Band of Angels
Living in Kentucky prior to the Civil War, Amantha Starr is a privileged young woman. Her widowed fa...
View Movie
Quincy Jones: In the Pocket
Composer, record, TV and film producer, arranger, instrumentalist, magazine founder and multi-media ...
View Movie
The Long Ships
Moorish ruler El Mansuh is determined to locate a massive bell made of gold known as the "Mother of ...
View Movie
Lilies of the Field
An unemployed construction worker heading out west stops at a remote farm in the desert to get water...
View Movie
The Bedford Incident
During a routine patrol, a reporter is given permission to interview a hardened cold-war warrior and...
View Movie
Something of Value
As Kenya's Mau Mau uprising tears the country apart, former childhood friends Kimani (Sidney Poitier...
View Movie
A Warm December
Widower Dr. Matt Younger and his daughter go to London for a month of dirt-bike racing. While there,...
View Movie
The Slender Thread
Alan is a Seattle college student volunteering at a crisis center. One night when at the clinic alon...
View Movie
For Love of Ivy
A white family has had the same Black maid for many years. When she tells them she wants to go back ...
View Movie
Sing Your Song
Most people know the lasting legacy of Harry Belafonte, the entertainer. This film unearths his sign...
View Movie
The Mark of the Hawk
The man called Obam struggles with the increasingly hostile forces facing each other in a colonial A...
View Movie
The Organization
After a group of young revolutionaries break into a company's corporate headquarters and steal $5,00...
View Movie
The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn
In the small Southern community of Twin Pines, GA, lives Noah Dearborn, a master craftsman and farme...
View Movie
Martin Luther King and the March on Washington
Documentary commemorating the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's March on Washington, a pivota...
View Movie
David and Lisa
A psychiatrist tries to treat an emotionally disturbed teenage boy who has a pathological fear of be...
View Movie
To Sir, with Love II
After thirty years teaching in London, Mark Thackeray retires and returns to Chicago. There, however...
View Movie
Brother John
An enigmatic man returns to his Alabama hometown as his sister is dying of cancer and incites the su...
View Movie
Separate But Equal
A dramatization of the events of Brown vs. Board of Education, the American court case that destroye...
View Movie
A Cinderella Named Elizabeth
Describes how Elizabeth Hartman was auditioned and chosen for the part of Selina in "A Patch of Blue...
View Movie
All the Young Men
During the Korean War, the lieutenant in charge of a Marine rifle platoon is killed in battle. Befor...
View Movie
Reinventing Elvis: The 68' Comeback
The making of Elvis Presley's famous live TV concert and the chaotic behind the scenes. It was the m...
View Movie
Sidney
This revealing documentary honors the legendary Sidney Poitier—iconic actor, filmmaker, and civil ri...
View Movie
The Last Brickmaker in America
A man must cope with the loss of his wife and the obsolescence of his job before finding redemption ...
View Movie
The Red Ball Express
August 1944: proceeding with the invasion of France, Patton's Third Army has advanced so far toward ...
View Movie
The Lost Man
A gang of black militants plots to rob a factory to finance their "revolutionary struggle."...
View Movie
Free of Eden
Story about Will Cleamons, a former teacher-turned-businessman who agrees to tutor 18-year-old high ...
View Movie
Cry, the Beloved Country
In the back country of South Africa, black minister Stephen Kumalo journeys to the city to search fo...
View Movie
Whoopi Goldberg Presents Moms Mabley
A feature documentary about Jackie "Moms" Mabley, an African-American stand-up comic and show-biz pi...
View Movie
Richard Widmark: Strength of Characters
A career overview of film and TV actor Richard Widmark....
View Movie
Mandela and de Klerk
Sidney Poitier and Michael Caine both received Emmy nominations for their performances in this made-...
View Movie
Virgin Island
A British woman marries an American writer in spite of her family's disapproval and goes to live wit...
View Movie
A Man Is Ten Feet Tall
Axel, secretly AWOL from the army, joins a black waterfront worker in his fight against bigotry. Te...
View Movie
King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis
A presentation of key events in the life of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. Beginning w...
View Movie
Good-bye, My Lady
An old man and a young boy who live in the southeastern Mississippi swamps are brought together by t...
View Movie
The Making of ‘Sneakers’
Behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of ‘Sneakers’ (1992)....
View Movie
Night of 100 Stars II
This special is the second "Night of 100 Stars" to benefit The Actors Fund of America. Edited from a...
View Movie
Scandalize My Name: Stories from the Blacklist
A look at the confluence of the Red Scare, McCarthyism, and blacklists with the post-war activism by...
View Movie
Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick
Documentary exploring the career of noted film directer William A. Wellman....
View Movie
Afro Promo
Co-curated by Jenni Olson and the late Black gay activist Karl Knapper, this entertaining showcase o...
View Movie
Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project
The documentary consists of tape of Don's show (never been filmed before), interviews with Don's con...
View Movie
The Strolling '20s
Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier travel down memory lane to see what life was like back in the 192...
View Movie
Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes / Feeling Heart
On March 11, 1959, Lorraine Hansberry’s 'A Raisin in the Sun' opened on Broadway and changed the fac...
View Movie
The Spencer Tracy Legacy: A Tribute by Katharine Hepburn
In this tribute to her frequent co-star and longtime love, Katharine Hepburn hosts a behind-the-scen...
View Movie
Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist
This Academy Award-winning documentary short Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist, narrated by Sidney ...
View Movie
Poitier's Walter Lee
An interview with film scholar Mia Mask, co-editor of Poitier Revisited....
View Movie
Nationtime
A report on the National Black Political Convention held in Gary, Indiana, in 1972, a historic event...
View Movie
Mr. SOUL!
On the heels of the Civil Rights Movement, one fearless black pioneer reconceived a Harlem Renaissan...
View Movie
Sidney Poitier: One Bright Light
Actor/director Sidney Poitier discusses his life and career. He tells of his upbringing in Jamaica; ...
View Movie
Three Young Americans in Search of Survival
Story essentially dealt with the dedication of three young Yanks - G, Smith's concern for wilderness...
View Movie
Sepia Cinderella
A struggling songwriter abandons his girlfriend for a flashy woman after landing a hit....
View Movie
A Star Without a Star: The Untold Juanita Moore Story
A group of unknowns noticed that a legendary actress had no star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame....
View Movie