Actor Louis Gossett Jr. loved Hollywood even when it didn’t love him back

For the casually initiated, an Academy Award is the key that unlocks doors of opportunities for one’s Hollywood career. But everything that glitters isn’t always gold in a place built on creating and maintaining illusion. Take Louis Gossett Jr., the Academy Award-winning actor who died March 29 at 87. Conventional wisdom says that after winning the Oscar for best supporting actor in 1982 for An Officer and a Gentleman, the classically trained actor’s phone would ring off the hook. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

“After the Academy Award — well, I was left with a lot of time on my hands,” Gossett said in 1989. ”I thought I’d get a lot of offers — and they didn’t come.”

And why wouldn’t he? Gossett was the second Black man to win an Oscar since Sidney Poitier in won for best actor for Lilies of the Field in 1963 and only the third Black person. The box office success of An Officer and a Gentleman and its critical acclaim should’ve made Gossett a hot commodity. But the phone didn’t ring for quite some time.

“I didn’t work in movies for another year,” Gossett said. “People weren’t ready for me to win, I guess. I figured winning an Oscar meant, ‘I’m a millionaire!’ And it never really meant a million dollars for anything.”

When film parts finally came his way, he was relegated to supporting roles Black actors often fill. There weren’t abundant opportunities for Black performers during Gossett’s heyday, so saying “no” wasn’t always an option. However, he never let the production scale or film type determine his performance level. Whether a big studio flick like An Officer and a Gentleman, the third Jaws movie, or a low-budget action flick with Chuck Norris (Firewalker in 1986), Gossett kept the same energy. Even if that meant wearing prosthetics and makeup as he did in Enemy Mine.

“Everybody turned [the role] down because you couldn’t see your face or your eyes. ‘How can you do a performance?’ So, there’s a little Lon Chaney Sr. [The Phantom of the Opera] in me, you gotta try it,” Gossett said. “That’s why I took it, because it was a challenge.”

There’s something cool, almost regal, about someone who brings the same dedication to everything, especially when an Oscar is sitting on mantel. Gossett took pride in his work ethic and understood the racial aspects of his profession. He lamented how the industry treated the average Black actor in 1989 and Hollywood’s “limited vision of what Blacks are.”

“The hip talkin’ — fool parts, the cop-movie parts, the blaxploitation movie roles, the con man types, all the Black stereotype characters, the parts for Blacks in white hats and dark glasses and chains around their necks,” Gossett said. He experienced unequal treatment behind the scenes during a dark period in his life.

Depressed, Gossett developed a drug and alcohol addiction after the award didn’t bring him what he dreamed of. He fought for leading roles and equal pay that didn’t materialize. He reached what many consider the pinnacle for actors, but nothing changed. “I said to myself, ‘What more can I do? Where’s the light at the end of the tunnel?’ I started to self-destruct.” He noticed how small the path is for Black actors compared to their white counterparts. He wrote about it in his memoir, An Actor and a Gentleman:

“[They] were able to overcome worse predicaments with drugs and alcohol and self-destructive acts. For them, there was a hope of redemption and an even more successful career at the end of treatment, the drug problem only adding to the allure. But for a Black man who was supposed to ‘mind his manners,’ the drugs were a permanent blemish. For me, the road was too narrow to have room to fool around.”

As Rowan Pope famously said on the TV show Scandal, “We have to be twice as good as them to get half of what they have.” It’s the same now as it was then. It says a lot that what he experienced 40 years ago is still relevant. Even after Gossett’s successful stint in rehab the status quo remained for a man who deserved more. What does it say about the entertainment industry when a man who overcame his transgressions, treated every job like it was his last, obtained so many accolades along the way, and who envisioned a world of “colorblind” casting never got the chance to achieve what several of his white co-stars did on film? And what does it say about the man that he got himself to a better place and pushed past his bitterness? Gossett loved Hollywood even if it never fully loved him back. An Academy Award signifies the entire entertainment community acknowledging someone’s talent and saying, “We like you. We really, really like you.” Those same people who voted for him in 1983 over Charles Durning, John Lithgow, James Mason, and Robert Preston hung him out to dry when the ceremony ended and the champagne stopped flowing. Gossett hoped that television would change things and that when audiences saw Black people in diverse roles, that might turn the tide toward better roles in film.

Eventually, it did.

While his film career never truly popped, Gossett blazed a trail on TV. Attaching someone with his stature to non-stereotypical roles opened doors for the people behind him. He showed his comedic talent on Psych. He voiced Lucius Fox on The Batman animated series and the drill sergeant on Family Guy. He played priests, reverends, private eyes, teachers, and even a superhero on Watchmen on HBO. That last one sticks out because it’s hard imagining a world where Watchmen starring Regina King exists if not for everything Gossett achieved. It’s even harder seeing anyone else but him playing Will Reeves/Hooded Justice with righteous indignation about what was taken from him and the methods he chose to take it back. There’s a Bible verse about everything having its season. Gossett had his when the people who grew up watching him in every Iron Eagle sequel and Jaws 3D cast him in their shows, like Watchmen, or movies like The Color Purple in 2023.

Those props didn’t come when he called, but in the end, they were on time.