Sidney Poitier KBE, born on February 20th, 1927, Miami, Florida, US was an actor, film director & ambassador. He was the 1st African American to win the Academy Award for Best Actor during 1964, having also received 2 Golden Globe Awards, a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) & a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.

Sidney's family lived in the Bahamas, which was then a British Crown colony, but he was born in Miami while they were visiting, which gave him U.S. citizenship. Poitier grew up in the Bahamas, but moved to Miami when aged 15 then to New York City at 16. He joined the American Negro Theater, being cast in his breakthrough movie role as a high school student in the picture Blackboard Jungle (1955).

Sidney starred with Tony Curtis as chained-together escaped convicts in The Defiant Ones (1958), which received 9 Academy Award nominations, both stars being nominated for Best Actor, with Poitier's being the 1st for a Black actor. The pair also had Best Actor nominations for the BAFTAs, with Sidney winning before being given the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Actor for Lilies of the Field (1963), playing a handyman helping a group of German-speaking nuns build a chapel.

Poitier was also praised for his performances in Porgy & Bess (1959), A Raisin in the Sun (1961) then A Patch of Blue (1965). He continued to break new ground in 3 popular pictures in 1967, which dealt with issues of race and race relations: To Sir, with Love, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night, getting Golden Globe & BAFTA nominations for his performance in the latter then in a poll the following year he was voted the top US box-office star. Sidney directed comedies from the '70s onwards, including Stir Crazy (1980), starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. After nearly a decade away from acting, he returned to TV & film starring in Shoot to Kill (1988) then Sneakers (1992).