{"id":802,"date":"2023-12-02T16:08:28","date_gmt":"2023-12-02T16:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ourtimenew.com\/?p=802"},"modified":"2023-12-02T16:08:28","modified_gmt":"2023-12-02T16:08:28","slug":"legendary-actor-sidney-poitier-fell-for-his-wife-of-45-years-on-a-movie-set","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ourtimenew.com\/?p=802","title":{"rendered":"Legendary actor Sidney Poitier fell for his wife of 45 years on a movie set"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the first Black man to win an Oscar, Sidney Poitier\u2019s six-decade career has been credited with paving the way for so many other Black actors.<\/p>\n

Following his death on January 6 at 94, tributes poured in for the icon, including former President Barack Obama, who said Sidney was \u201ca singular talent who epitomized dignity and grace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fellow actor Denzel Washington said it was a privilege to Sidney, a friend adding: \u201cHe was a gentleman and opened doors for all of us that had been closed for years.\u201d<\/p>\n

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After securing his first lead role in the movie Blackboard Jungle in 1955, Sidney Poitier went on to star in 55 films and TV series and will go down in history for breaking down Hollywood\u2019s racial barriers.
\nAs the saying goes \u2018No man succeeds without a good woman behind him\u2019 This was the case with the Bahamian-American actor who married Canadian actress Joanna Shimkus in 1976.
\nBut by the time he met Shimkus, he\u2019d already been married, had four children, and had an affair.
\nPoitier was the youngest of seven children who spent the first ten years of his life on Cat Island in the Bahamas where his father had a farm. The family would travel to Miami to sell products which is where Poitier was unexpectedly born three months premature \u2013 which meant he was entitled to U.S. citizenship.<\/p>\n

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Bahamian-American actor Sidney Poitier at the 39th Academy Awards in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, 10th April 1967. He is presenting the award for Best Supporting Actress. (Photo by Archive Photos\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

After moving to the Bahamas\u2019 capital Nassau he then moved to America when he was 15 and served in World War Two as a teen after lying about his age.
\nAfter leaving the army, he worked as a dishwasher until an audition landed him a role with the American Negro Theatre in Harlem, New York. It was the budding actor\u2019s second attempt to get in after he was told he \u201ccould hardly read\u201d and couldn\u2019t be an actor with the accent he had after his first audition when he was 18 years old.
\nUndeterred by the harsh rejection he went away and bought himself a radio so he could mimic the accents he heard, read any newspaper and magazine he could get his hands on, and enlisted the help of an elderly Jewish waiter at the restaurant where he worked as a dishwasher to help him read and expand his vocabulary.<\/p>\n

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Hollywood honors actor Sidney Poitier at the site of his star on the Walk of Fame on January 08, 2022, in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Aaron\/Bauer-Griffin\/GC Images)
\nHe returned to the production company a year and a half later where he had another audition which secured him a place on the program and a career that would win him countless awards.
\nOver a decade later after he first appeared on our screens he became the first Black actor to win an Oscar for the film \u201cLilies of the Field.\u201d But perhaps his most important role was in \u201cThe Lost Man\u201d where he met his future wife, Joanna Shimkus. The movie was released in 1969 four years after Poitier and his first wife Juanita Hardy divorced.
\nIt was also the year after his nine-year affair with actress Diahann Carroll ended.
\nhttps:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/CLih4UjJOOa\/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=a9d0eff5-d3df-49fc-a9d2-3ebbdf1cb42c
\nSidney\u2019s first marriage to Juanita Hardy was held for 15 years. They married in 1950 and separated in 1965. But his union with Joanna Shimkus stood the test of time and they shared two daughters.
\n\u201cI guess we were just destined to be [together],\u201d Joanna said in 1998.
\nShimkus took a break from acting between 1972 and 2010 to raise their daughters Anika and Sidney who have both followed in their parent\u2019s footsteps.
\nAnika directed \u201cBlack Irish,\u201d where Shimkus was an executive producer as well. Meanwhile, Sidney appeared in \u201cVeronica Mars\u201d and Quentin Tarantino\u2019s \u201cDeath Proof.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Sidney Poitier with his wife Joanna Shimkuss; circa 1970; New York. (Photo by Art Zelin\/Getty Images)
\nSpeaking about how they\u2019ve made it work, Poitier said in an interview with Closer: \u201cThere is one key ingredient my wife has helped me to recognize over the years, and that is the importance of articulating love for one another on a daily basis.\u201d
\n\u201cMy wife and my children mean the most to me,\u201d Sidney told People in 2016, while Shimkus added another detail to making their relationship last: \u201cWe\u2019ve been together 49 years and I\u2019m a good cook. I cook every night. \u2026 I take good care of him.\u201d
\nDespite his many achievements in life: an honorary Academy Award for his work in the entertainment industry, the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a knighthood from the Queen, he never lost sight of the importance of family.
\n\u201cI grew up in Canada and I never really had any kind of prejudice \u2014 it\u2019s unlike America. I just never had those feelings. And we\u2019ve never had a problem, actually. It could be that we lead a very quiet life. It could be that it\u2019s just the way it is, I don\u2019t really know. But I never really did see him as a Black man. I mean, I know he is Black, but I just saw him as a man, and he was just a wonderful person. An amazing human being,\u201d she said in the documentary Sidney Poitier: One Bright Light.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the first Black man to win an Oscar, Sidney Poitier\u2019s six-decade career has been credited with paving the way for so many other Black actors. Following… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourtimenew.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourtimenew.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourtimenew.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourtimenew.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourtimenew.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=802"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ourtimenew.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":807,"href":"https:\/\/ourtimenew.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions\/807"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourtimenew.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourtimenew.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourtimenew.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourtimenew.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}