Sidney Poitier: A trailblazing life in his own words

“I felt very much as if I were representing 15, 18 million people with every move I made.” — From his memoir.

“It’s a choice, a clear choice. If the fabric of the society were different, I would scream to high heaven to play villains and to deal with different images of Negro life that would be more dimensional. But I’ll be damned if I do that at this stage of the game.” — On playing heroic, altruistic characters, from a 1967 interview.

“I can tell you what I think the flak was about. For a long time, I got all the jobs — one picture after another after another. And the roles I played were very unlike the average Black person in America at the time. The guy always had a suit, a tie, a briefcase! He was a doctor, lawyer, police detective. Middle-class. The characters weren’t reflective of the diversity of Black life. I don’t know that I wouldn’t have had resentments myself, had I been an actor on the outside looking in.” — On criticism of his on-screen persona, from a 1995 interview with the Washington Post.

“In the original script, I looked at him with great disdain and, wrapped in my strong ideals, walked out,” he wrote. “That could have happened with another actor playing the part, but it couldn’t happen with me.” — On returning a white man’s slap in 1967’s “In the Heat of the Night,” from his memoir.