Sidney Poitier was not the first major African-American actor, nor the first black actor to be nominated for an Academy Award. What she did was break the color barrier and gain wide acceptance among audiences of all races due to her acting skills and screen presence. Sidney Poitier was born in Miami in 1927 to Bahamian parents but grew up on Cat Island in the Bahamas. As a newborn he weighed only three kilos. His father had a shoebox ready to bury him. He, of course, survived. His birth was a fitting representation for a life in which he smashed the odds against him. As the youngest of eight children, he grew up in poverty and had little formal education. At the age of thirteen he dropped out of school to help support his family. At fifteen he was sent to Miami to live with his brother. After living in Miami for a year, Poitier went to New York. In his first months in New York he was so poor that he slept in a bus station bathroom. With no money (only three dollars in his pocket) and no place to live, he lied about his age and joined the Army and served as a physician's assistant during World War II for a year. After returning from the war, Poitier auditioned for the role of medical assistant. American Negro Theater. Because of his accent, he was mocked by the producers. He spent the next six months working on his diction and enunciation skills and returned to audition once again. This time he was accepted. Poitier made his Broadway debut in Lysistrata. Four years later, he made his film debut in No Way Out. Throughout the 1950s he made some of the most important and controversial films of the era. In 1951, he addressed issues of racial inequality abroad in Cry, The Bel...... middle of paper ...... him as "His Excellency Sir Sidney Poitier". It is impossible to overestimate the influence that Sidney Poitier had on African Americans and white Americans in the 1950s and 1960s, both as a role model and an image maker. With an integrity that never wavered, Poitier broke the color barrier and forever changed the racial perception of movie audiences and executives in an industry dominated on both sides of the Atlantic by whites. Bibliography http://news.bbc.co. uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/13/newsid_2524000/2524235.stmGoudsouzian, A. (2004). Sidney Poitier: man, actor, icon. Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill Books.Keyser, L. J., & Ruszkowski, A. H. (1980). The Cinema of Sidney Poitier: The Changing Role of the Black Man on the American Screen. San Diego, CA: AS Barnes. Poitier, S. (1980). This life. Toronto: Random House of Canada