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Best of the Century

Entertainters

Sidney Poitier

In the fifties and sixties, Poitier embarked on a streak of cinematic firsts for black actors. He was the first black actor to be nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award, for The Defiant Ones, in 1958, and the first to win the Best Actor nod, for Lilies in the Field, in 1963. In 1968, Poitier became the first black No. 1 box-office star, shortly after he performed half of the first movie kiss between a white woman and a black man, in 1967's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Poitier's characters had a common thread: they were intelligent, rational men--non-threatening to whites but exhibiting a quiet dignity and controlled anger. In In the Heat of the Night, when Rod Steiger's redneck sheriff asks Poitier's Virgil Tibbs, "What do they call you, boy?" he responds, "They call me Mr. Tibbs." It became one of Poitier's most celebrated lines, a quiet demand for respect that reverberated throughout filmdom. Some have argued that Poitier was perfectly tailored to become the first major black film star because he seemed devoid of any menace--indeed, one critic called him a "chocolate-dipped Mary Poppins."

For more info go to http://www.celebsite.com/people/sidneypoitier/content/bio.html

Samuel L. Jackson

BEFORE emerging as a star with his performance as a Jherri-Curled, Bible-thumping hit man in Pulp Fiction (1994), Samuel L. Jackson had immersed himself so completely in his thirty previous roles that moviegoers rarely recognized him from one film to the next. Jackson had bopped from back-alley thug (Mo' Better Blues, 1990) to computer dweeb (Jurassic Park, 1993) to dope-dealing dad (Menace II Society, 1993), and had achieved only the merest hint of name or face recognition. But, in 1994, when Quentin Tarantino plucked Jackson from the ranks of the semi-obscure and cast him in Pulp Fiction, his turn as a burger-munching tough guy earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and some long-deserved notoriety.

For more info go to http://www.celebsite.com/people/samuelljackson/content/bio.html

Angela Bassett

Undeterred by such low notes, Bassett worked her way through tale-from-the-'hood typecasting and into mainstream stardom. With such roles as Katherine Jackson, mother of the talented singing brood, in The Jacksons: An American Dream; Betty Shabazz to Denzel Washington's Malcolm X; and her Oscar-nominated performance as Tina Turner in What's Love Got To Do With It?, Bassett's résumé attests to her fearless and insatiable quest to tackle roles entrusted only to Serious (with a capital S) Actresses. In fact, she is quite often compared to Meryl Streep, arguably the most Serious Actress around. Bassett's incandescence has even conferred upon her lesser projects--the millennium sci-fi flick Strange Days, Vampire in Brooklyn--some sorely-needed class.

Danny Glover

AMONG those who know him best, actor Danny Glover is nearly as renowned for his tireless social activism as for his many acting accomplishments. Perhaps the truest measure of his commitment to helping people is that, by and large, only those who really do know him are aware of how continuously involved with crusading against various social ills he is. As longtime friend and frequent co-star Mel Gibson once put it, "Most people in Hollywood have a token thing they do, but it's mostly about self-aggrandizement and ego. That's not the case with Danny. He's up to his eyeballs in devoting time to community services and just causes. He keeps going whether or not the public knows about it." Perhaps the only other aspect of his public life Glover is so assiduously devoted to is his acting career, which has grown by leaps and bounds since he first bellyached to Gibson that he was getting "too old for this shit" in 1987's Lethal Weapon. The action franchise that film spawned assured Glover's lifelong financial security many times over, but that has yet to stop him from piling up new projects as rapidly as if he were living from paycheck to paycheck.

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