Denzel Washington paid tribute to his longtime mentor Sidney Poitier after the pioneering actor’s death on Friday at the age of 94, calling him a friend.
“It was a privilege to call Sidney Poitier my friend,” Washington said in a statement provided to The Daily Beast. “He was a gentle man and opened doors for all of us that had been closed for years. God bless him and his family.”
Poitier was instrumental in breaking down racial barriers in Hollywood, becoming the first Black man to take home the Oscar for Best Actor in 1963 for Lilies of the Field.
In 2002, he was honored by the Academy Awards for his lifetime of remarkable accomplishments, with Washington presenting him with the award, calling him “unique.”
“You couldn’t cut Sidney Poitier out of a Sidney Poitier picture,” Washington said. “He was the reason a movie got made. The first solo, above the title, African American movie star.”
The night ended up being one that Poitier had almost certainly dreamed of, as Washington became the second Black man to win Best Actor for Training Day, and Halle Berry cried on stage as she accepted the Best Actress award for Monster’s Ball—the first Black woman to be honored.
Denzel Washington and Halle Berry hold their Oscars after winning the award for Best Actor and Actress in a Leading Role on March 24, 2002, at the 74th Academy Awards at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California.
Mike Nelson/AFP/GettyThe magnitude of the historic triumph wasn’t lost on Washington, who devoted the first portion of his acceptance speech to the man he called his mentor.
“Forty years I’ve been chasing Sidney [Poitier], they finally give it to me, what’d they do? They give it to him the same night,” he joked. “I’ll always be chasing you, Sidney. I’ll always be following in your footsteps. There’s nothing I would rather do, sir. Nothing I would rather do. God bless you. God bless you.”
Poitier later said that Oscars ceremony was immensely special because it “represented progress.”
“It was an example of the persistence and the effort, and determination of young people of color,” he said in an Oscars video. “It was a spectacular evening. I paid then, and I pay now a great respect to Denzel Washington. He had taken the concept of African Americans in films to a place where I couldn’t, I didn’t. And he has taken it there with the same kind of integrity that I tried to articulate. So, I thank him for that.”
Poitier and Washington have long had a special relationship, with Washington crediting his mentor with doling out crucial career advice when it came to being selective with the films he was associating himself with. Washington recalled one particular film that he almost starred in, a movie he jokingly referred to as The N***** They Couldn’t Kill.
“I called Sidney and told him ‘man they are offering me $600,000 to play the The N***** They Couldn’t Kill, he said in a 2012 interview. “And he told me, ‘I’m not going to tell you what to do. But I will tell you this, the first, two, three or four films you do in this business will dictate how you are perceived.’ He didn’t tell me what to do, I give him credit for that. So, I turned it down and six months later I got Cry Freedom and got an Oscar nomination.”
In an interview with Variety that was published this week, Washington said one of his biggest wishes was to have co-starred alongside Poitier. “God bless him,” Washington said. “He’s still here. But yeah, I missed that opportunity.”
On Friday, Black entertainers and directors paid their respects to the man who helped pave the way for them. Whoopi Goldberg wrote, “If you wanted the sky I would write across the sky in letters that would soar a thousand feet high. To Sir… with Love. Sir Sidney Poitier R.I.P. He showed us how to reach for the stars.”
“The grace and class that this man has shown throughout his entire life, the example he set for me, not only as a Black man but as a human being will never be forgotten,” Tyler Perry added in a heartfelt Instagram post.
Viola Davis said, “No words can describe how your work radically shifted my life. The dignity, normalcy, strength, excellence and sheer electricity you brought to your roles showed us that we, as Black folks, mattered!!!”
