Who was the first African American Actor to win Oscar for best actor?

KBC Offline: Who was the first African American Actor to win Oscar for best actor?

Answer: Sidney Poitier 

Hollywood icon Sidney Poitier was the first African American to win an Academy Award for Best Actor, receiving the honor in 1964 for his performance in ‘Lilies of the Field. 

After a delinquency-filled youth and a short stint in the U.S. Army, Sidney Poitier moved to New York to pursue an acting career. He joined the American Negro Theater and later began finding roles in Hollywood. Following his performance in the 1963 film Lilies of the Field, he became the first African-American to win an Academy Award for Best Actor. He also directed several films, including Buck and the Preacher and Stir Crazy. The acclaimed actor was knighted in 1974 and honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. 

Poitier’s success as an actor reached new heights when he scored an Academy Award nomination for the 1958 crime drama The Defiant Ones, with Tony Curtis. The following year, he lit up the screen as a leading man in the musical Porgy and Bess, co-starring with Dorothy Dandridge. Both this film and his impressive turn in the 1961 film adaptation of A Raisin in the Sun helped make the actor a top star.

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