Sidney Poitier - biography

“I come from a great family.  I’ve seen family life and I know how wonderful, how nurturing, and how wonderful it can be.”

“But my dad also was a remarkable man, a good person, a principled individual, a man of integrity.”

“My father was a poor man, very poor in a British colonial possession where class and race were very important.”

“History passes the final judgment.”

“I decided in my life that I would do nothing that did not reflect positively on my father’s life.”

“I wanted to explore the values that are at work, underpinning my life.”

“I wanted to look at them because I feel, internally, that I am an ordinary person who has had an extraordinary life.”

“I’ve had it all my life and when it can time for me to start a family, I was quite anxious to do so.”

“My autobiography was simply the story of my life.”

“So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness.”

“I hate to think that my avenues of artistic expression were circumscribed by my color.”

“I’m black and I’ve decided I like my color.  Anyone that doesn’t, that’s their worry.”

“I had chosen to use my work as a reflection of my values.”

“In my case, the body of work stands for itself...  I think my work has been representative of me as a man.”

“So I’m OK with myself, with history, my work, who I am and who I was.”

“A good deed here, a good deed there, a good thought here, a good comment there, all added up to my career in one way or another.”

“As a man, I’ve been representative of the values I hold dear.  And the values I hold dear are carryovers from the lives of my parents.”

“But I always had the ability to say no.  That’s how I called my own shots.”

“I had learned something of Miami from people who had visited there, so I knew what to expect.”

“I never had an occasion to question color, therefore, I only saw myself as what I was...  a human being.”

“I was not the kind of a principal player that was so in demand that eight or 10 or 12 scripts came per month.”

“I was the only Black person on the set.  It was unusual for me to be in a circumstance in which every move I made was tantamount to representation of 18 million people.”

“If you apply reason and logic to this career of mine, you’re not going to get very far.  You simply won’t.”

“Jackie Robinson is a true legend.”

“Mine was an easy ride compared to Jackie Robinson’s.”

“Since I couldn’t actuate the things that I wanted to do, the only weapon I had was to say no.”

“So I had to be careful.  I recognized the responsibility that, whether I liked it or not, I had to accept whatever the obligation was.  That was to behave in a manner, to carry myself in such a professional way, as if there ever is a reflection, it’s a positive one.”

“So it’s been kind of a long road, but it was a good journey altogether.”

“The journey has been incredible from its beginning.”

“There is not racial or ethnic domination of hopelessness.  It’s everywhere.”

“To be compared to Jackie Robinson is an enormous compliment, but I don’t think it’s necessarily deserved.”

“To simply wake up every morning a better person than when I went to bed.”

“We all suffer from the preoccupation that there exists...  in the loved one, perfection.”

Sidney Poitier has appeared in the following films:
Sepia Cinderella (1947)
No Way Out (1950)
Cry, the Beloved Country (1951)
Red Ball Express (1952)
Go, Man, Go! (1954)
Blackboard Jungle (1955)
Good-bye, My Lady (1956)
Edge of the City (1957)
Something of Value (1957)
Band of Angels (1957)
The Mark of the Hawk (1957)
Virgin Island (1958)
The Defiant Ones (1958)
Porgy and Bess (1959)
All the Young Men (1960)
A Raisin in the Sun (1961)
Paris Blues (1961)
Pressure Point (1962)
Lilies of the Field (1963)
The Long Ships (1964)
The Bedford Incident (1965)
The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
A Patch of Blue (1965)
The Slender Thread (1965)
Duel at Diablo (1966)
To Sir, with Love (1967)
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)
For Love of Ivy (1968)
The Lost Man (1969)
They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! (1970)
King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis (1970)
Brother John (1971)
The Organization (1971)
Buck and the Preacher (1972)
A Warm December (1973)
Uptown Saturday Night (1974)
The Wilby Conspiracy (1975)
Let’s Do It Again (1975)
A Piece of the Action (1977)
Shoot to Kill (1988)
Little Nikita (1988)
Sneakers (1992)
The Jackal (1997)


Sidney Poitier directed the following films:
Stir Crazy (1980)
Hanky Panky (1982)
Ghost Dad (1990)