Paul Edward Winfield (May 22, 1939 – March 7,
2004) was an American television, film, and stage
actor.
He was known for his portrayal of a Louisiana
sharecropper who
struggles to support his family during the Great Depression in the landmark film
Sounder which earned him an
Academy Award nomination.
Winfield also portrayed
Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. in the television miniseries
King, for which he was
nominated for an
Emmy Award.
Early years
Winfield
was born in Los
Angeles
, California
to Lois Beatrice Edwards, a union organizer in the garment industry. His stepfather from the age
of eight was Clarence Winfield, a city
trash collector and
construction worker.
He attended Manual Arts High School, the
University of
Portland
, Stanford University
, Los Angeles
City College and the University of
California at Los Angeles
.
Career
Winfield carved out a diverse career in film, television, theater
and voiceovers by taking ground breaking roles at a time when
African-American actors were scarcely cast. His first major feature
film role was in the 1969 film,
The Lost Man starring
Sidney Poitier. Winfield first became
well-known to television audiences when he appeared for several
years opposite
Diahann Carroll on
the groundbreaking
television
series Julia. Filmed
during a high point of racial tensions in the United States, the
show was unique in featuring an African-American female as the
central character. He also starred as
Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1978
miniseries King.
In 1973, Winfield was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Actor
for the 1972 film
Sounder,
and his co-star in that film,
Cicely
Tyson, was nominated for
Best Actress. Prior to their
nominations, only two other
African
Americans -
Dorothy Dandridge
and
Sidney Poitier - had ever been
nominated for a leading role. He also appeared, in a different
role, in the 2003 Disney-produced television remake of
Sounder, which was directed by
Kevin Hooks, his co-star from the original.
Winfield played the part of “Jim the Slave” in
Huckleberry Finn (1974)
which was a musical based on the novel by
Mark Twain. Winfield would recall late in his
career that as a young actor he had played one of the two leads in
Of Mice and Men in local
repertory, made up in whiteface, since a black actor playing it
would have been unthinkable. Winfield also starred in the
miniseries, including
Roots: The Next
Generations,
Alex Haley's
Queen: The
Story of an American Family and
Scarlett.
Winfield gained a new segment of fans for his brief but memorable
roles in several
science fiction TV
programs and movies. He portrayed Starfleet Captain Clark Terrell
of the U.S.S. Reliant, an unwilling minion of
Khan Noonien Singh, in
Star Trek II: The Wrath of
Khan and Lt. Traxler, a friendly but crusty cop partnered
with
Lance Henriksen in
The Terminator starring
Arnold Schwarzenegger. In 1996 he was
part of the 'name' ensemble cast in
Tim
Burton's comic homage to 1950's
science fiction Mars Attacks!, playing the complacently
self-satisfied
chickenhawk Lt-Gen. Casey. On the small screen
Star Trek
franchise, he appeared as an alien captain who communicates in
metaphor in the
Star Trek: The Next
Generation episode “
Darmok”. He also
appeared on
Babylon 5, as General
Richard Franklin, the father of regular character
Dr. Stephen Franklin, in the second season
episode "
Gropos."
Winfield also took on roles as gay characters in the films
Mike's Murder in 1984 and
again in 1998 in the film
Relax...It's Just Sex. He found
success off-camera due to his unique voice. He provided
voices on the
cartoons
Spider-Man,
The Magic School Bus,
Batman Beyond,
Gargoyles,
K10C, and
The Simpsons, on the latter voicing the
Don King parody Lucius Sweet. In
his voiceover career, he perhaps best-known as the narrator for the
A&E true crime series
City Confidential, a role
he began in 1998 and continued with until his death in 2004.
Throughout his career, Winfield frequently managed to perform in
the theater.
His only Broadway
production,
Checkmates, in 1988, co-starring Ruby
Dee, was also the Broadway debut of Denzel Washington. He also appeared in
productions at the Mark Taper Forum
in Los Angeles, and The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington,
D.C.
Winfield was nominated for an
Emmy Award
for his performance in the
King and
Roots: The Next
Generations. He won an
Emmy
Award, in 1995, for
Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series, for his appearance
as Judge Harold Nance in an episode of the
CBS
drama
Picket Fences.
Personal life and death
Winfield was openly
gay in his private life, but
remained discreet about it in the public eye. His
partner of 30 years,
architect Charles Gillan, Jr., died on March 5,
2002 of
bone cancer.
Winfield long battled
obesity and
diabetes, and he suffered a
stroke. He died of a
heart attack in 2004 at the age of 64,
at
Queen of
Angels–Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Winfield
and Gillan are interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park
in Los Angeles.
Selected filmography
Awards and nominations
References
External links
Wikis
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