Louis Gossett Jr., Academy Award-Winning Stage and Screen Actor, Dies at 87
(Photo: Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
Louis Gossett Jr., an Academy and Emmy Award-winning stage and screen actor who enjoyed a busy career on Broadway in the ‘60s, has died. He died at a rehabilitation center in Santa Monica, California, on March 29. Gossett’s first cousin Neal L. Gossett confirmed the death. No cause of death was given. He was 87.
Louis Cameron Gossett Jr. was born on May 27, 1936, in Brooklyn. Unable to play basketball due to injury, he made his stage debut at the age of 17 in a school production of You Can't Take It with You. The same year, at the encouragement of a teacher and with no formal acting training, he auditioned for and landed the lead role in Louis Peterson’s Take a Giant Step (1953) on Broadway.
More Broadway roles followed, including A Raisin in the Sun in 1959, a role he reprised—along with Sidney Poitier—for the 1961 film adaptation. Of performing with Poitier on Broadway, Gosset told the New York Times in 2022, “I remember that we played poker on Saturday night between shows, and he owes me $75. You think I’ll get it?” Around the same time, he was also an established folk singer in the Greenwich Village folk scene, performing on the stage of Cafe Wha? In the mid-1960s, he starred in the musical Golden Boy on Broadway alongside Sammy Davis Jr.
Increasingly concentrating on screen roles, Gossett gained wide recognition and won an Emmy Award for his performance in the television miniseries Roots (1977). In 1982, for his role as Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley in An Officer and a Gentleman, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, the first Black actor to win in the category.
In 2002, he briefly played the role of Billy Flynn in Chicago—his first Broadway role since Murderous Angels in 1971—but departed the show after four nights for health reasons. Most recently, he played Will Reeves / Hooded Justice in HBO’s Watchmen and appeared in the 2023’s The Color Purple.
Gossett is survived by his sons, Satie and Sharron Gossett, and several grandchildren.