LOS ANGELES (US) – Actress Cicely Tyson, who was known for portraying the struggles of Black women caught up in life’s struggles, died on Thursday at 96, said her manager in a statement. In a career spanning six decades, she clinched three Emmys and a Tony Award.
The cause of her death is not known. She had recently completed her memoir, “Just As I Am”, which was released this week.
Tyson won the most acclaim for the role of a Louisiana sharecropper’s wife in the 1972 movie “Sounder” and the movie fetched her an Academy Award nomination. In November 2018, she received an honorary Oscar.
She also bagged two Emmys for the same TV movie, “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” – one for best actress in a miniseries or movie and one for actress of the year. The flick, which was released in 1974, portrayed a woman’s life from slavery to the 1960s.
She won another Emmy 20 years later for “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All.” She was nominated nine times for Emmy awards for her roles of Binta, the mother of the slave Kunta Kinte in the 1977 miniseries “Roots”; Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s wife, Coretta, in “King”; and the inspirational educator in “The Marva Collins Story”.
As per the statement issued by her manager Larry Thompson, Tyson thought “of her new memoir as a Christmas tree decorated with all the ornaments of her personal and professional life.”
“Today she placed the last ornament, a Star, on top of the tree,” he added.
Her career blossomed even in her 80s. In 2011, she was part of the ensemble of “The Help” and in 2013 when she was 88, she won a Tony for a Broadway revival of “The Trip to Bountiful”, which is about a woman returning to her small hometown. It was her first time on Broadway in three decades.
The actor was busy even after turning 90. In 2015, she starred with frequent collaborator James Earl Jones in a Broadway revival of the play “The Gin Game.” According to The New York Times, Tyson and Jones, who had last appeared on Broadway almost five decades earlier, proved “that great talent is ageless and ever-rewarding.”
In February 2019 at 94, Tyson appeared on the cover of Time magazine’s “The Art of Optimism” edition. When an interviewer asked her if she had considered retiring, “And do what?” was her response.
Tyson said she made use of her career to champion issues important to her such as race and gender.
“I realised very early on when I was asked certain questions or treated in a certain way that I needed to use my career to address those issues,” she said in an interview with People magazine in 2015.
She told CBS that she perceived the Hollywood hierarchy as a ladder with white men at the top, followed by white women and Black men. According to her, Black women were at the bottom.
She was born in December 1924 in New York and grew up in the Harlem neighbourhood of the city as the daughter of immigrants from the West Indies.
Tyson worked as a secretary and model before taking up acting assignments in the 1950s. She became one of the first Black actors to feature regularly on US television in the early 1960s, playing the role of the secretary of George C. Scott in the series “East Side, West Side.”