Subscribe to the US Guardian Today newsletter
Cicely Tyson, the pioneering black actress who won an Oscar nomination for her role in Sounder, won a Tony award in 2013 at the age of 88 and touched the hearts of viewers in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, died Thursday at 96.
Tyson’s death was announced by his family, through his manager Larry Thompson, who did not immediately provide additional details.
“With a heavy heart, Miss. Cicely Tyson announces his peaceful transition this afternoon. Right now, allow the family to have privacy, ”according to a statement issued by Thompson.
A former model, Tyson started his screen career with small roles, but gained fame in the early 1970s, when black women were finally starting to land leading roles. In addition to her Oscar nomination, she won two Emmys for playing a 110-year-old former slave in the 1974 television drama, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.
Tyson’s memoir, Just As I Am, was published this week.
“I am very selective, as I have been doing all my career, about what I do. Unfortunately, I’m not the type of person who works only for money. There has to be some real substance for me to do that, ”she told the Associated Press in 2013.
A new generation of viewers saw her in the 2011 hit The Help. In 2018, she received an honorary Oscar statuette at the annual Governors Awards. “This is the culmination of all those years of rich and poor,” said Tyson.
In 2016, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s largest civilian tribute. At this ceremony, Barack Obama said, “Cicely’s convictions and grace helped us to see the dignity of every beautiful memory of the American family.”
Sounder, based on the novel by William H Hunter, was the film that confirmed his stardom in 1972. Tyson was cast as Rebecca, married to a Depression-era sharecropper (Paul Winfield) arrested for stealing a piece of meat for his family. She is forced to take care of her children and to take care of the plantation.
The New York Times critic wrote: “She lets go of all her easy beauty to finally give us some sense of the profound beauty of millions of black women.” Tyson was nominated for an Oscar for best actress in 1972.
In an interview with cable channel Turner Classic Movies, she recalled that she was asked to audition for a minor role in the film and said she wanted to play Rebecca. They said to her, “‘You are very young, very beautiful, very sexy, very much, very much’, and I said, ‘I am an actress'”.
In 2013, at the age of 88, Tyson won Tony for best lead actress in a play for the reassembly of Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful. It was the actor’s first time back on Broadway in three decades and she sweetly refused to turn away when the teleprompter said to end her acceptance speech.
“‘Please wrap it,’ he says. Well, that’s exactly what you did to me: you wrapped me up in your arms after 30 years, ”she told the crowd.
Later, she told the AP that she had not prepared any speech – “I think it’s presumptuous” – and that “I spent half of my time thinking about what I was going to say”. She reprized her role in a film for television Lifetime, which was shown at the White House.
In The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, based on a novel by Ernest J Gaines, Tyson is seen growing old from a young woman in slavery to a 110-year-old woman who campaigned for the 1960s civil rights movement.
“People ask me what I prefer to do – film, stage, television? I say, ‘I would have made Jane Pittman in the basement or in a store.’ It is the role that determines where I go, ”she told the AP.