Essay Example on Sidney Poitier: Achieving Perfection Through Practice

It is said practice leads to perfection. Poitier Sidney is an excellent example of these wise words. Despite having a less formal education, he worked hard to achieve things, even the most literate people could not. He took his first audition rejection positively. It served as a motivation to perfect himself. His hard work yielded many fruits through recognition and being awarded in different scenarios. He has remained to be an iconic figure to his society. Therefore, this paper seeks to go through his life journey.

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He was born in 1927. Sidney was a son to Evelyn and Reginald, who were farmers. He had less than two years of schooling, meaning that he had very little formal education. When Sidney turned 15, he was sent to Miami. He lived with his brother. He went to Miami to prevent a growing tendency toward criminal behavior. In the United States, Sidney experienced the racial chasm which divides the nation, a great fright to a young man coming from a society with a multiple of African descent (Vasquez, 2017). At the age of 18, Sidney moved to New York. He did unskilled jobs and slept within a bus terminal toilet. More unskilled jobs followed a short stint within the Army as an employee at a hospital of veterans in Harlem.

Poitier's first audition by the American Negro Theatre went badly. He struggled a lot to read the script, and his accent of West Indian made him hard to understand. Therefore, the audition was rejected so vehemently that Sidney dedicated the following six months to enhancing his performing skills and overcoming his accent (Jacob). He purchased a radio and dedicated adequate time to pay attention to the voices as well as training himself to pronounce words. Also, he studied magazines and newspapers to learn how to read.

As scholars say that practice leads to perfection, Poitier's second trial was successful, and he ended up being accepted without any complication. Ultimately, the theater hired him. A casting agent had spotted him in rehearsal and won a bit part within the Broadway Production in which he received good reviews (Vasquez, 2017). By the end of 1949, Sidney had to decide between chief roles on stage and the offer to serve for Darryl F. Zanuck within the film titled "No Way out" of 1950. His act as the doctor treating a white extremist got him plenty of recognition that led to more roles.

However, the roles were still less prominent and exciting than those white actors regularly obtained. Seven years later, after rejecting several projects, Sidney considered humiliating, he got some roles which hurled him into a category unusual if ever accomplished by an African American man during that time. One of these movies, "The Defiant Ones" of 1958, earned him his leading Academy Award nomination as the best actor (Jacob). After five years since the appointment, Sidney won the Field's Oscar for Lilies of 1963, becoming the first African to be awarded a leading role.

Poitier remained active on screen and stage as well as within the growing Civil Rights movement. In "To Sir, with Love" and "Who's Coming to Dinner," both of 1967, his roles were landmarks in aiding to break down several social barriers between whites and blacks. His conscience, talent, inherent, and integrity likability equalized him with the day's white stars. In the 1970s, he took on producing and directing chores achieving success within both arenas (McLaren, 2016). Poitier said that he guesses he leaped six feet from his seat when his name was called. Something that most media describe that it caught him as a surprise with relaxed quiet laughter.

By 1989, Poitier's film character incorporated the streetwise student in "The Blackboard Jungle," the appropriate, collected schoolteacher in "To Sir, With Love," the fidgety, frustrated Walter Lee Younger in "A Raisin in the Sun" and the methodical but frank detective Virgil Tibbs in "In the Heat of the Night." The most enduring and memorable of those roles personified the experience of numerous black Americans (Buckner, 2015). It embodied an abiding faith within the institution of the country, coupled with anger and frustration that is directed at those same institutions.

In talking about how Sidney got to the pinnacle of stardom, it argued in terms of his words. He had often thought of survival in provisions of his internal self, which is more significant than the external elf, and he wanted to be in his terms (Willis, 2015). Also, he said he wanted to be tolerable to himself, and Sidney felt that way in acting. At the age of 73, Mr. Poitier marveled many, ha had sworn off red meat, alcohol, sugar, and milk, referring to an infrequent ice cream scoop like falling off the wagon. Sidney is 6-foot-3, trim, fit, 200 pounds, and still smiling the glowing smile that began his career five decades ago.

It is vivid from the discussion that Poitier Sidney is somebody who has gone through a lot to become a pinnacle of his society. He is an iconic figure that symbolizes a positive transformation. Sidney is a role model to many; the majority of children want to be him or even better. Also, he is an encouragement to young adults that the difficulties they face today are not barriers to their dream and future goals. Sidney is one of a kind, an individual who never gives up regardless of the challenges that come along his way. Despite Sidney being rejected frustratingly in his first audition, he never gave up but continued practicing to perfect his act. His personality can drive that he is a hardworking and persevering individual. His hard work saw him being awarded on numerous occasions, like the Oscar award, and even being nominated as the best actor. Sidney's popularity rose to appoint that he started being compared with the best white actors of that day. Finally, he is a living proof that our color does not makes inferior or superior, especially for the black American who was treated inhumanly at that time.

References

Buckner, J. L. (2015). Sidney Poitier.

Jacob, F. (n.d.). Sidney Poitier and the Cinematic Fight against South African Apartheid.

McLaren, J. (2016). Lilies of the Field at 50: Race, Religion, and Sidney Poitier's Westward Journey. Black Renaissance, 16(1), 112.

Vasquez, I. P. (2017). The Poitier Effect by Sharon Willis. Journal of Film and Video, 69(2), 62-63.

Willis, S. (2015). The Poitier Effect: Racial Melodrama and Fantasies of Reconciliation. U of Minnesota Press.