Rise to Fame
The role that made his career wasn't written for him. Sgt. Emil Foley in An Officer and a Gentleman was written as a white character, and Jack Nicholson had already passed on it. Director Taylor Hackford visited a Navy base and found the top drill instructors were Black, so he recast. Gossett trained at Camp Pendleton, starting at 4:30am. At the 1983 Oscars, he was so certain he'd lose that his agent had to jab him in the chest when his name was called. He became the first Black man to win Best Supporting Actor. He's said he didn't get a movie offer for a year after that.
In the Spotlight
Despite the Oscar, film stardom never really arrived. He stayed primarily in TV, playing authority figures and mentors across seven decades. The late-career argument that he'd been consistently underused gained real support in 2019, when he played Hooded Justice in HBO's Watchmen and earned an Emmy nomination at 83. Four years later, he was in the Color Purple musical remake, working alongside people who'd revered him for decades. He described himself at 87 as "on the verge of semi-retirement" but kept showing up, which is its own kind of statement.
Side Notes
The Beverly Hills police chained him to a tree outside the Beverly Hills Hotel in 1967 for walking in the wrong neighborhood. He described the racism he couldn't process as "the crack in the armor" that let drugs in, leading to years of freebase cocaine and alcohol and a mysterious illness that doctors eventually traced to toxic mold in his Malibu home. He got clean in 2004 and spent his last decades working through the Eracism Foundation he'd founded. He earned the dignity he projected on screen. It didn't come standard.
Final Chapter
His Roots co-star LeVar Burton called him "one of the best to ever do it" and shared a photo from the set. Director Taylor Hackford said Sgt. Foley "may have been the first Black character in American cinema to have absolute authority over white characters." Dionne Warwick had cast him to play her grandfather in a planned biographical film; his death ended that project. His final screen role, as Ol' Mister in the Color Purple musical, was released just months before he died.