Paul Winfield

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Paul Edward Winfield, 1939-1939 – March 7, 2004) was an American television, film, and stage actor.

In the 1972 film Sounder (1972), he was recognized for his portrayal of a Louisiana sharecropper who is struggling to help his family during the Great Depression.

In the 1978 television miniseries King, he portrayed Martin Luther King Jr., for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award.

Winfield was also known for his appearances in The Terminator, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

He received five Emmy Awards overall for his 1994 appearance in Picket Fences.

Early years

Lois Beatrice Edwards, a single mother who worked as a union organizer in the clothing industry, was the son of Winfield. Although official sources obituaries stated he was born in Los Angeles on May 22, 1941, several primary sources show he was born in Dallas, Texas, on May 22, 1939. Clarence Winfield, a city garbage collector and building worker, was his stepfather from the age of eight. He graduated from Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles. He attended the University of Portland, 1959–59; Stanford University, 1959; Los Angeles City College, 1959–64; University of California, 1964; University of California, Santa Barbara, 1970–71; and the University of California, 1959–71.

Personal life and death

Winfield was gay, but remained mum in the public eye. He had been in a relationship with his Sounder co-star Cicely Tyson for 18 months before realizing his sexuality. Architect Charles Gillan Jr., his partner of 30 years, died of bone cancer on March 5, 2002. Obesity and diabetes have long been a battle for Winfield. He died of a heart attack at the Queen of Angels, age 64. At Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles, Winfield and Gillan are interred together.

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Career

At a time when black actors were rarely cast, a lifetime member of The Actors Studio, Winfield, carved out a varied career in film, television, theatre, and voiceovers. As Mitch, a race car mechanic, first appeared in the 1965 Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Runaway Racer." Sidney Poitier, who appeared in the 1969 film The Lost Man, was his first major feature film role. Winfield first made television audiences laugh when he appeared on Julia, the groundbreaking television series, for many years. The film, shot during a moment of racial tensions in the United States, was unusual in presenting a black female as the central character. Martin Luther King Jr. appeared in the 1978 miniseries King.

Winfield was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1972 film Sounder, and his co-star, Cicely Tyson, was nominated for Best Actress. Only three other black Americans – Dorothy Dandridge, Sidney Poitier, and James Earl Jones – had been nominated for a leading role before their nominations and Diana Ross' for Lady Sings the Blues in the same year. He appeared in a different capacity in the 2003 Disney-produced television version of Sounder, which was directed by Kevin Hooks, his co-star from the original. In Huckleberry Finn (1974), Winfield appeared in "Jim the Slave," a musical based on Mark Twain's book. Winfield will recall later in his career that he had been one of the two leads in Of Mice and Men in local repertory, but this would have been unthinkable if a black actor playing it. Winfield has appeared in miniseries including Scarlett and two others based on Alex Haley's work.

Winfield attracted a new audience thanks to his brief but memorable appearances in numerous science fiction television series and films. In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, he portrayed a friendly but crusty cop partnering with Lance Henriksen in The Terminator, he portrayed starship Captain Terrell, an unwilling minion of the villain Khan. In 1996, he appeared in Tim Burton's comedic tribute to 1950s science fiction's Mars Attacks! He was a member of the 'name' ensemble cast, playing the complacently self-satisfied Lt. General Casey. In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Darmok" he appeared on the small screen as Dathon, an alien captain who communicates in allegories. He appeared in the second season of Babylon 5 as General Richard Franklin, the father of regular character Dr. Stephen Franklin, and on the fairy tale sitcom The Charmings as the Evil Queen's wise-cracking Magic Mirror. During the last two seasons of television series 227, he also played Julian Barlow.

In 1984 and again in 1998 in the film Relax...It's Just Sex, Winfield took on homosexual characters in Mike's Murder. Due to his unique voice, he had a blast off-camera. He consulted on the cartoons Spider-Man, The Magic School Bus, Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child, Batman Beyond, Gargoyles, K10C, and The Simpsons, with the latter voicing Don King parody Lucius Sweet. He is perhaps best known as the narrator for the A&E true crime series City Confidential, which he began in 1998 and continued with until his death in 2004. Winfield has performed in theaters throughout his career. Checkmates, his first Broadway performance, starring Ruby Dee, was also Denzel Washington's first Broadway performance. He appeared in several Los Angeles productions, as well as in The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C., who was nominated for an Emmy Award for his role in King and Roots: The Next Generations. In 1995, he received an Emmy Award for his appearance as Judge Harold Nance in an episode of CBS drama Picket Fences.

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