Earle Hyman

Earle Hyman, born George Earle Plummer on October 11, 1926, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, was an American actor whose career spanned stage, television, and film across more than five decades. His parents, Zachariah Hyman and Maria Lilly Plummer, relocated the family from the South to Brooklyn, New York, in the late 1920s in search of better educational opportunities, and Hyman grew up primarily in Brooklyn. He claimed Native American ancestry. Singer Phyllis Hyman was his cousin. Hyman died on November 17, 2017, at the Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey, at the age of 91.

Hyman's interest in acting began at age four, following a poem performance at a church play. His commitment to the profession solidified after his parents took him to see Nazimova in a production of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts at Brighton Beach on his thirteenth birthday. He went on to study acting at HB Studio in New York City and became a life member of The Actors Studio.

His Broadway career began in 1943, when he made his debut as a teenager in Run, Little Chillun. He subsequently joined the American Negro Theater and, beginning the following year, spent two years playing the role of Rudolf in Anna Lucasta on Broadway, a production starring Hilda Simms in the title role. Hyman's Broadway work continued for nearly five decades, with credits including Waiting for Godot, The Master Builder, A Celebration of Paul Robeson, and Death and the King's Horseman, among other productions, his stage presence on Broadway extending through 1992.

Hyman became a member of the American Shakespeare Theatre at the start of its first season in 1955 and played the role of Othello during the 1957 season. His classical work extended internationally as well. In December 1958, he traveled to London to take the leading role in Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, by Errol John, at the Royal Court. The following year he appeared in the West End again, this time in the first London production of A Raisin in the Sun alongside Kim Hamilton, a production staged at the Adelphi Theatre and directed by Lloyd Richards.

Throughout his career, Hyman performed regularly in Norway in addition to the United States, and he owned property there, including a cabin in Skånevik. He learned to speak Norwegian through Rolf Sirnes, a Norwegian seaman originally from Haugesund, with whom Hyman shared his life for fifty years. In personal correspondence, Hyman described Sirnes as his partner and characterized their relationship as a passionate friendship. Sirnes died in 2004. In 1988, Hyman received the St. Olav's Medal in recognition of his contributions to Norwegian theater.

On television, Hyman played two separate roles at different points on The Edge of Night and voiced the character Panthro, along with various other characters, on the animated series ThunderCats from 1985 to 1989. He appeared in television adaptations of Macbeth in 1968, Julius Caesar in 1979, and Coriolanus in 1979. His portrayal of Russell Huxtable, the father of Bill Cosby's character Cliff Huxtable on The Cosby Show, earned him an Emmy Award nomination in 1986.

Among his honors, Hyman received a Theatre World Award in 1956. In June 2020, the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., acquired his personal items and memorabilia, establishing the Earle Hyman Collection.