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Exclusive: Hollywood Legend Sidney Poitier Opens Up About Electing a Black President, Racial Barriers in Hollywood, His Family, and Staying Out of the Spotlight in the September/October Issue of AARP The Magazine

WASHINGTON, July 24 PRNewswire-USNewswire — Known for shying away from the spotlight, Sidney Poitier opens up about experiencing racism firsthand, the state of black actors in Hollywood, the importance of his family, and why he's a self-described loner in a rare one-on-one interview with AARP The Magazine, the definitive voice for 50+ Americans and the world's largest-circulation magazine with more than 34 million readers. As he approaches his 82nd birthday, Poitier reflects on his rise from a semi-literate dishwasher to venerable actor, his isolated childhood on tiny Cat Island in the Bahamas, and the racism he first experienced at age 15 when his family moved to Miami. He also discusses his successful 40-year marriage, the lessons his mother taught him, his new book Life Beyond Measure: Letters to My Great-Granddaughter, and how he carefully chose each of his 56 film roles during his pioneering career. Featured on the cover of the September/October issue of AARP The Magazine — available nationwide July 24th — the Oscar and Golden Globe-winning actor also comments on having a black man as the presidential candidate for a major political party saying, "I imagined it. I was always aware that it might not come in my life. It just goes to show you how far we have indeed come."

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On Love of Family and Leaving a Legacy...

"My mother was the most amazing person. She taught me to be kind to other women. She believed in family. She was with my father from the first day they met. All that I am, she taught me."

"I want my great-granddaughter to have a fairly good understanding of the world in which I lived for 81 years and also the world before I came into it — all the way back a hundred thousand years, to the beginning of our species. I also want her to know that the responsibility for the survival of the human family rests exclusively on the human family — and that she needs to be part of the energy that will contribute to that survival.

On Experiencing Racism Firsthand...

"I didn't run into racism until we moved to Nassau when I was ten and a half, but it was vastly different from the kind of horrendous oppression that black people in Miami were under when I moved there at 15. I found Florida an antihuman place. But by the time I got there, I already had a sense of myself — I knew who I was. And I was of value. So when Florida said to me, 'You are not who you think you are,' I said, 'Oh, yes I am. I am who I think I am. I am not who you think I am.'"

"I had been working as a dishwasher and saw a call in a newspaper for actors at the American Negro Theatre, and when I auditioned, I read so poorly I was thrown out. [The director] found me wanting — not just as an actor but as a person. He grabbed me by the seat of my pants and said, 'Just get out of here and go get yourself a job as a dishwasher or something!' and slammed the door behind me. I was halfway down the block going to catch a bus downtown to find a job as a dishwasher and I said, 'Wait a minute. I didn't tell him I was a dishwasher.' He was passing a judgment on my worth. And that was the trigger."

On A Black Man as the Presidential Nominee...

"I imagined it. I was always aware that it might not come in my life. It just goes to show you how far we have indeed come. We are not home yet, by quite a bit. But we have to acknowledge, by our own efforts and the collaborative efforts of friends and fellow human beings, that we have come a long way."

On The State of Blacks in Hollywood Today...

"Magnificent. You have Denzel. Morgan Freeman, Samuel Jackson, Forest Whitaker, Will Smith, and all kinds of younger actors. These guys are spreading out and doing wonderful, imaginative things — directing and making job opportunities for other actors. Now, the women have had bad treatment. There's Angela Bassett and Halle Berry. Others are quite excellent but don't get the roles. I would hope that changes. But overall we are at a different place."

On Breaking Through Hollywood...

"It was difficult, but then, I knew how difficult it had been for the others who had paved the way for me — my predecessors. If I had done what they unfortunately had been forced to do, I would have been on the screen behaving in the manner in which they had to behave just to get work. They couldn't do better because they were not thought of as equals."

"I made 56 movies, and they were carefully chosen by me, not by the industry. I had only one power, and that power was I could say, 'No, I cannot play that.' I said that time and time again. And those films never appeared because I never made them."

"My father was a certain kind of man — I saw how he treated my mother and his family and how he treated strangers. And I vowed I would never make a film that would not reflect properly on my father's name."

"We were in the dead center of the civil rights movement. But if you look at the history of blacks in films — from the inception of American films until then — those movies were revolutionary. And they were largely brought about by people in the film industry who were not black — but who were humanist and who believed in the brotherhood of mankind and wanted to make films that spoke to that sense of brotherhood in themselves."

On His Choice to Change the Script of In the Heat of the Night...

"I could never make such a film. If the man slapped me, I was supposed to just stare at him and walk away? That's not how I was raised. And so I told them I cannot play that. But it was not a threat — it was just that I would not play it. And they said, 'What can we do to change that?' And I explained [that Tibbs should slap the white man back], and I got a written agreement that the new scene we shot would remain in the film."

On Having Regrets...

"Ah, it depends upon your philosophical point of view, how you see life. I don't. I have none. I have behaved in despicable ways, and I recall them. I don't regret them. That came out of an understanding that I arrived at much, much later in my life — that there is not one choice I made, not one, that I would change. Because then my life would have led to somewhere else."

On Secrets to a Long and Happy Life...

"I eat fish, mostly salmon. I eat chicken. I eat tons of vegetables at every meal. I eat brown rice. And no alcohol — I haven't had a taste in close to 40 years. I stopped smoking 40 years ago, too. And I walk, but, you know, at 81 my gait is not what it used to be."

"I love my life! I have a wife I love. We have children. I have children from my first wife, who has remained close. It's a very simple life — but it's a life that allows me to be myself."

On Protecting Our Planet...

"Well, this planet is perfectly designed for us. But we ignore our responsibility to it. We abuse it. We are disrespectful. We behave with one another in ways that damage it. So what we do about all this depends on how we manage as a family — and I mean the 6.7 billion of us on this planet."

To Sidney With Love:

***words of love for this Hollywood legend from his colleagues, as exclusively told to AARP The Magazine.***

"I remember sitting on my linoleum floor when I was ten years old, watching the Academy Awards, and I saw Sidney Poitier. My mother worked as a maid. We were on welfare. We were 'colored' at the time, so I saw a 'colored' man get out of a limousine and was just in awe of that. And then that night, he won the Academy Award for Lilies of the Field. In my spirit I knew that because he had won the Oscar, I, too, could do something special — and I didn't even know what it was." —Oprah Winfrey

"We see this successful, elegant man now, but as a child, an adolescent, his life was not a done deal. Sidney respected his mistakes. When failure came, he never said, 'This is too difficult, too hard' — he had the resiliency to try again. His life is somewhere between astounding and unbelievable." —Bill Cosby

An image of the July/August cover of AARP The Magazine featuring Sidney Poitier is available upon request.

About AARP The Magazine

With more than 34 million readers nationwide, AARP The Magazine (www.aarpmagazine.org) is the world's largest circulation magazine and the definitive lifestyle publication for Americans 50+. Reaching over 23.5 million households, AARP The Magazine delivers comprehensive content through in-depth celebrity interviews, health and fitness features, consumer interest information and tips, book and movie reviews and financial guidance. Published bimonthly in print and continually online, AARP The Magazine was founded in 1958 and is the flagship title of AARP Publications.

About AARP

AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization that helps people 50+ have independence, choice and control in ways that are beneficial and affordable to them and society as a whole. AARP does not endorse candidates for public office or make contributions to either political campaigns or candidates. We produce AARP The Magazine, the definitive voice for 50+ Americans and the world's largest-circulation magazine with over 34 million readers; AARP Bulletin and AARP Bulletin Today, the go-to daily news source for AARP's 39 million members and Americans 50+; AARP Segunda Juventud, the only bilingual U.S. publication dedicated exclusively to the 50+ Hispanic community; and our website, AARP.org. AARP Foundation is an affiliated charity that provides security, protection, and empowerment to older persons in need with support from thousands of volunteers, donors, and sponsors. We have staffed offices in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

SOURCE AARP

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