Louis Gossett Jr. reflects on career as he turns 80

Only death will slow Louis Gossett Jr. down, he says, but the Oscar-winning actor, who just turned 80, has no plans to spend his remaining years basking in reflection. The New York native has not less than six films scheduled for release in 2016 alone, according to the IMDB, and there’s still so much more he would like to do.

“There’s more stories to tell about our history. Everybody knows about the Romans and the Greeks and the Vikings and the British, [but] there’s [another] culture that’s very rich: the African culture,” Mr. Gossett told The Washington Times. “All of those cultures need to be put on the screen properly, and I think it’s going to be done. Before I pass, I’d like to play one of those leaders.”

Mr. Gossett would especially like the chance to portray Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who crossed the Alps with a pack of soldiers and elephants to sack Rome during the Second Punic War in the Second Century B.C. Hannibal’s is but one tale from Africa, he said, that needs to be told on film.

“We have to tell those stories. Our inclusion in history is important to see, especially for African-American children,” he said. “They have to know whose shoulders they stand on.”

In a six-decade career, Mr. Gossett has appeared in nearly 200 films and television programs, including the original miniseries “Roots” in 1977, which has been remade and is now airing on History Channel.

“ABC was afraid of losing the Southern market,” Mr. Gossett said of the original series based on Alex Haley’s novel. “We knew the lessons, we knew the stories, and we had the opportunity to tell the story as authentically and as beautifully as possible, which we did.”

The series, which also starred LeVar Burton, John Amos, Cicely Tyson and Maya Angelou, received 37 Emmy Award nods and won nine. The episode that aired Jan. 30, 1977, was the most-watched program in history until the “Who Shot J.R.?” finale of “Dallas” in 1980 and the “M*A*S*H” finale in 1983.

“Now there’s a generation who doesn’t understand that, so [executive producer] Mark [Wolper] made the decision to do it again,” Mr. Gossett said of the remake. “I’m glad he’s doing that again, but we have a bigger story to tell about our history,” adding that stories about black athletes, military heroes and others need yet to be told in film.

Mr. Gossett was privileged to learn and work with the legendary Sidney Poitier as a young actor in 1961’s “A Raisin in the Sun.” Mr. Poitier had already scored an actor Oscar nod for “The Defiant Ones” in 1958, and would win for “Lillies in the Field” in 1963, becoming the first African-American actor to win an Oscar for best leading actor.

“He’s one of my role models and definitely a man of history,” Mr. Gossett said of Mr. Poitier.

Mr. Gossett’s turn at the podium came in the spring of 1983, when his name was called as best supporting actor for “An Officer and a Gentleman.” He was the first black actor to win an Oscar in a supporting role and, incredibly, only the third black actor to win one, period.

“My agent hit me in the ribs and said, ’They called your name,’” Mr. Gossett recalls of his big night. “I got up, very unprepared for a speech, and I said, ’All you [fellow nominees], this is ours.’”

Mr. Gossett has been in all manner of films over his career, from the historical (“Roots”) to action movies — Mr. Gossett said a government pilot once came up to him and said that it was the “Iron Eagle” series that encouraged him to pursue a career in the skies — to even action-comedies like 1986’s “Firewalker,” which starred Mr. Gossett and Chuck Norris as a pair of modern-day treasure hunters seeking a fortune south of the border.

“[Mr. Norris] and I became pretty tight — two buddies. We had a ball down in Mexico,” Mr. Gossett recalls in his basso profundo voice. “I have a lot of respect for him and his family.”

(There have even been the ludicrous, such as “Jaws 3-D” in 1983, the same year Mr. Gossett took home his Oscar.)

Mr. Gossett has often decried the level of onscreen mayhem in Hollywood films. In an interview with Washington Times reporter Tom Quimby in May , he said that children are “affected by these kinds of movies.”

It’s not just violence in movies, he believes, but in all aspects of human living that need to be addressed.

“We need to have a mantle of forgiveness for the past. We need to start fresh and go back to the original reason we were put on the planet: to take care of the planet and one another and pass that on,” the actor said, adding that challenges like global warming must be addressed before it is too late.

“The responsibility in the entertainment industry has to do with raising the bar as a human society,” he said. “We’re going for the money rather than the lessons.”

It might seem strange, then, that Mr. Gossett accepted an offer to be a guest star on the HBO series “Boardwalk Empire,” the violent saga of gangsters controlling the illegal booze trade during Prohibition. However, it’s not as much of a stretch as it seems, he believes, calling his blind character, Oscar Boneau, from “old roots. He’s an old gangster, but deep inside the character was a very special kind of generational man. … It was a great opportunity to work on high-quality HBO” art, he said.

Away from the silver screen, Mr. Gossett has worked tirelessly at addressing ongoing racial tensions in the U.S. and abroad. His foundation, Eracism, works to eradicate such societal animus.

In the same vein, Mr. Gossett said that when he played Egyptian leader Anwar al-Sadat in the TV film “Sadat,” he learned that Sadat had something in common with Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela: the value of forgiveness.

“We need to go in that direction and follow [Mandela’s] lessons,” Mr. Gossett said.

Renaissance man

In addition to his acting career, Mr. Gossett has also enjoyed success as a songwriter. He recalls with glee an incident when, as a struggling actor living in California in the late 1960s, a tune he had co-written with Richie Havens caught up to him — when he least expected it.

While still living in New York and working on Broadway, he wrote “Handsome Johnny,” inspired by the soul tunes he loved so well, and then handed the song off to Havens. Mr. Gossett headed west for a TV show called “The Young Rebels,” which he thought might finally be his big break.

“The series flops, and I’d been lying to landlord, and he’s backing the truck up” to the front door, Mr. Gossett recalls with a hearty chuckle.

The same day, he says, a mailman — yet another out-of-work actor — showed up at his door with a residual check for “Handsome Johnny” in the amount of $72,000. The song’s success was due largely to Havens having sung it at Woodstock.

“I had been very close to being homeless then, but I haven’t been homeless since,” Mr. Gossett said. “It’s been a lot of lighting in a bottle.”

After a recent cancer scare, Mr. Gossett has been mindful of his health and his diet. He says he feels more energetic than ever, and is grateful both for friends and family at an age when life is far more often about loss than gain.

But retire? It’s for the birds, he says.

“Somebody’s going to have to grab me by the nape of the neck and say ’that’s it!’” he said. “I feel like I’m about 50 right now. I’m very blessed.”