Louis Gosett Jr.

Louis Gosset Jr. was born in New York in 1936, his father was a doorman and his mother a nurse, although his ancestors go back to Liberia and Sierra Leone. Tall, he measures 1.93 meters, and slender in his early years, he presented ideal athletic skills to attempt a race on such a path. But although he loved sports, an injury led to a period of rest that would prove decisive in finding out that he had a talent for acting, he discovered that he liked embodying characters. It was before he decided to pursue formal studies to become an actor, when he took on a role in the school play “You Can’t Take It with You” by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart .. She was 17 years old then, and the urge to live other lives than his own awoke in him. Seeing his talent, a high school teacher encouraged him to audition for a play on Broadway, where he was selected from nearly 200 candidates for the position.

During his student days at New York University, he was offered to join the basketball team, but he chose to lean towards his acting side. And soon jobs would come out in the theater, on Broadway he represented “Take a Giant Step”, a play by Louis S. Peterson, and “A Raisin in the Sun”, written by Lorraine Hansberry , which he himself adapted to the cinema, in A mole in the Sun (1961), a version starring Sidney Poitier , and marking Gosset’s feature film debut.

The actor has a very long and very prolific acting career in theater, television and cinema, which continues when he is well over eighty years old, and even though he was diagnosed with prostate cancer that he seems to have overcome. He is the perfect secondary, as he recounts in his interesting memoirs “Actor and a Gentleman”, whose title is obviously a nod to his most memorable role on the screen, that of the tough drill sergeant in Officer and a Gentleman ( Taylor Hackford , 1981), who was worth the Oscar for best supporting actor, the first time an African-American received it. Married three times, the marriages ended in an annulment and two divorces, relationships from which he has a biological son and another adopted,

On the small screen, he has been in numerous popular series, always with small roles. Without claiming to be exhaustive, it is worth remembering his presence in The Bill Cosby Hour , The Young Rebels , Youth Patrol , McCloud , Bonanza , Little House on the Prairie , Backstairs at the White House , ER , Boardwalk Empire and Madam Secretary of State , although none were as important in her career as Raíces, where his role as Fiddler Reynolds made it easier for the public to finally become familiar with his face, something that the aforementioned Officer and a Gentleman finished achieving shortly after , where the clash with the character of Richard Gere , including a memorable fight, made history in the seventh art. Gideon Oliver (1989), a series created by the legendary Dick Wolf where he gave life to an anthropology professor who helped solve crimes, gave him access to a leading role, but it would be short-lived. He had had more luck embodying Sadat (1983) in the miniseries of the same name.

It was inevitable that his Sergeant Emil Foley from Officer and Gentleman would open the range of offers for military roles, and thus he played the popular Colonel Charles “Chappy” Sinclair in Steel Eagle (1986), which would have three sequels. He was Dennis Quaid ‘s alien antagonist in Enemy of Mine (1985), though he was barely recognizable under the layers of makeup, which was perhaps an advantage, since Wolfgang Petersen ‘s film was a complete dud. Among his many film titles, the landlord (1970), Trips with my aunt (1972), The White Dawn (1974), and in 1977 stand out in the 70sThe immoral patrol and Abyss .

In the 80s, in addition to the Oscar for An Officer and a Gentleman , there was the opportunity to see him in 3D in the sad sequel Jaws 3 (1983). He was better given with The Rector (1987), one of those films that describes violence in the classroom. He will never stop working, but the roles that he is offered only serve the role of keeping him busy and helping him make ends meet, they are not memorable. They have some repercussion Operation: Toy Soldiers (1991), the robbery tape The Perfect Coup (1992) and the comedy with Sean Connery A good man in Africa(1994). The third millennium does not catch him tired when it comes to being required and accepting jobs, but the films where he is seen do not have a great impact, perhaps the most striking is The Power of Forgiveness (2010) and the boxing film A Fighting. Man (2014). In 2019 he has signed up for the comic television version of Watchmen .