“He represented possibility”: Sidney Poitier paved the way for fellow Black actors. This is his legacy.

Sidney Poitier broke through racial barriers, challenged stereotypical roles only given to Black actors during his time, and inspired a generation during the civil rights movement.

This week, the pioneering actor and activist died at the age of 94, surrounded by his friends and family. 

To pay tribute to Sidney, we take a look back at his life, including his childhood in the Bahamas, his experiences with racism, Sidney's family life, and the indelible legacy he leaves behind. 

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Video via ABC News.

Sidney Poitier's childhood.

Sidney was born in 1927 to parents Reginald and Evelyn Poitier. 

He was raised in Cat Island in the Bahamas, before his family then moved to the capital Nassau. 

His parents were Bahamian farmers who had travelled to the US to sell tomatoes while Sidney's mother was pregnant with him. But Sidney arrived earlier than expected! His premature birth meant he gained both US citizenship and Bahamian citizenship. 

Sidney had a close relationship with his father, saying in an interview with American Film that his dad "had a wonderful sense of himself. Every time I took an acting part from the first day, I always said to myself, 'This must reflect well on his name'."

From the age of 12, Sidney decided to quit his schooling in order to earn money as a day labourer. It was a necessity, Sidney later said: "because my family needed the money to survive." 

Sidney Poitier on coming to America. 

Image: Getty. In his early teens, Sidney moved to America, first settling in Miami to live with his brother. When he reached the age of 15, Sidney moved to New York. 

As soon as he set foot in the US, he was immediately faced with racism, segregation and overall discrimination.

"I couldn't go into certain stores and try on a pair of shoes. I had to travel in the back of a bus and I had never had to do that before. It was a big disappointment to me," Poitier said on CNN's Larry King Live in 2008.

"I lived in a country where I couldn't get a job, except those put aside for my colour or my caste."

Growing up in the Bahamas, a country with a predominantly Black population, Sidney never saw his identity as intrinsically linked to his skin colour, unlike the realities many faced in places like America.

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Sidney briefly served in the army at the age of 16, before then becoming a dishwasher in a New York restaurant, in order to "make a living and feed myself". 

One day, Sidney was reading the Amsterdam News, New York City's oldest Black newspaper, in a bid to find more dishwasher opportunities in the job ad section. He came across another ad, calling for Black actors to come and try out at the American Negro Theatre.

Sidney decided to give it a go. But when he went to the audition, the director became impatient with Sidney's thick Caribbean accent and limited reading skills. 

"He came up on the stage, furious, and grabbed me by the scruff of my pants and my collar and marched me toward the door," Sidney told the Los Angeles Times. 

Image: Getty. So to improve his literacy skills, Sidney listened to radio broadcasts to mimic their American accents and learned to read. 

"I must pay thanks to an elderly Jewish waiter who took time to help a young Black dishwasher learn to read," Sidney told the audience at the 2002 Oscars where he received a special honorary award. "I cannot tell you his name. I never knew it. But I read pretty good now."

Feeling more confident, Sidney returned to the American Negro Theatre in the early 1940s and was hired as a janitor in exchange for acting lessons.

Sidney Poitier's acting triumphs.

Focusing on stage productions and films, Sidney was first offered a leading role in 1946, in Aristophanes' Ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata.

In 1950, Sidney's performance in the film No Way Out, sparked a pattern of the characters he began to play: Black men faced with racism. Other films Sidney starred in with similar themes include The Defiant Ones (1958) and Pressure Point (1962).

The Defiant Ones saw Sidney become the first Black man nominated for a lead actor Oscar, and he won a Bafta for the same film.

Additional trailblazing films included Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) where he played a Black man with a white fiancée and In the Heat of the Night (1967) he played a Black police officer confronting racism during a murder investigation.

Feature Image: Getty.