Actor Yaphet Kotto passed at 81. This veteran of stage and screen since the sixties had many memorable roles. He had bit parts in films that grew to larger roles like a groundbreaking black villain in the James Bond film, Live and Let Die, one of the crew of the scifi horror classic, Alien, and a tough lawman in Midnight Run. He guest starred in many TV shows including an excellent original Hawaii Five 0 episode as a traumatized war vet and in a marvelous holiday episode of Night Gallery. But the TV role he owned was the leader of a group of Baltimore detectives in Homicide: Life on the Street.
I was lucky to be a Facebook friend with him.
Did you know he turned down the role of Lando Calrissian in Star Wars or Captain Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation? And he was there at the Lincoln Memorial in DC in 1963 when Martin Luther King Jr. made his speech. Kotto realized his dream.
No comments:
Post a Comment