In Ridley Scott’s Alien, he took the role of the space ship’s engineer Dennis Parker.įollowing the film’s success, Kotto turned down a role in Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back because he was wary of becoming typecast in the sci-fi genre. Kotto then had roles in 1974’s Truck Turner and 1978’s Blue Collar. Kotto drew plaudits for his role as the first black Bond villain Dr Kananga – an evil Caribbean diplomat masquerading as a New York drug lord – in Live and Let Die, starring Roger Moore. His first few film projects included Nothing But a Man in 1964 and The Thomas Crown Affair in 1968. At 19, he made his professional theatre debut in Othello, and later performed on Broadway in The Great White Hope. Al Giardello throughout the entire seven-year run of the series, one of the few actors in the main cast to do so.įollowing his run on that show, Kotto would only appear in two more projects: 2008’s Witless Protection, his final live-action role, and, in 2014, he briefly reprised his role as Parker for the video game Alien: Isolation.Kotto was born in New York to a Cameroonian immigrant father and a US Army nurse, and began to study acting at the age of 16. But he found a truly iconic role on primetime television when, in 1993, he joined the cast of David Simon’s Homicide: Life on the Street. The ’80s saw Kotto take on more supporting work - he had memorable roles alongside Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin in Midnight Run (’88), and Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Running Man - and he kicked off the ’90s in style by beating the hell out of Freddy Kruger in Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (’91). But, if you’re reading this, you probably know him from his role as Parker in Ridley Scott’s Alien, in which he rounded out an excellent ensemble in one of the greatest science-fiction horror films ever made. He’s genuinely astonishing in the film, dominating every single frame he’s in with charisma and style. It was his work at the end of the decade that provided Kotto with two of the strongest roles in his entire career: in 1978, he took a part alongside Richard Pryor and Harvey Keitel in Paul Schrader’s masterpiece Blue Collar, which is probably listed amongst your favorite filmmaker’s favorite films. And he’d earn acclaim on television as well, as, in 1976, he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for his portrayal of Idi Amin in the TV film Raid on Entebbe. But it was in smaller films, such as the blaxploitation classics Truck Turner, which he starred in alongside Isaac Hayes, and The Monkey Hu$tle, where he shared screen time with Dolemite maestro Rudy Ray Moore, that he thrived (the latter film would prove to be a major influence on Black Dynamite and its star, Michael Jai White). Big, the voodoo-influenced heavy, in the James Bond film Live and Let Die, which introduced him to audiences all over the world and cemented part of his legacy. And what a decade it was for Kotto: Beginning in 1972 with Barry Shear’s Across 110th Street, the actor became an icon almost overnight. He began acting in films in 1963, taking bit parts in films like The Thomas Crown Affair with Steve McQueen and 5 Card Stud with Robert Mitchum, but he wouldn’t become renowned until the following decade. He was 81.īorn in Harlem in in 1939, Kotto began acting at the age of 16, and made his professional debut two years later in a production of Othello. Yaphet Kotto, one of the coolest men to ever grace screens large and small, died on Monday (March 15) in the Philippines, according to a post made by Thessa Sinahon, the actor’s wife, on his Facebook page and confirmed later to the New York Times by his agent.
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