Yaphet Kotto

Yaphet Frederick Kotto (November 15, 1939 – March 15, 2021) was an American actor born in New York City whose career spanned Broadway, film, and television across more than five decades. His mother, Gladys Marie, was a nurse and U.S. Army officer of Panamanian and Antiguan descent, while his father, Avraham Kotto — originally named Njoki Manga Bell — was a Cameroonian businessman who had emigrated to the United States in the 1920s and was raised Jewish. His mother later converted to Judaism. Following his parents' separation during his childhood, Kotto was raised by his maternal grandparents. He attended Holy Cross Grammar School in the Soundview section of the Bronx and by age sixteen was studying acting at the Actors Mobile Theater Studio.

Kotto launched his professional acting career at age nineteen with a performance in Othello and subsequently became a member of the Actors Studio in New York. His Broadway career ran from 1965 to 1968 and included appearances in The Zulu and the Zayda and The Great White Hope. His screen debut came in 1963 in an uncredited role in 4 for Texas, followed by a part in Michael Roemer's Nothing but a Man (1964). He took on a supporting role in the caper film The Thomas Crown Affair in 1968, the same year he appeared as Marine Lance Corporal John Auston in the Hawaii Five-O episode "King of the Hill." In 1967, he was cast in the Death Valley Days episode "A Man Called Abraham," playing a religious man living in the southwestern desert. That same year he released the single "Have You Ever Seen the Blues" / "Have You Dug His Scene" on Chisa Records.

Kotto's film career gained significant momentum in the 1970s. In 1973 he portrayed the James Bond villain Mr. Big in Live and Let Die, and that same year appeared in both Across 110th Street and Truck Turner. He played police officer Richard "Crunch" Blackstone in the 1975 film Report to the Commissioner and portrayed Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the 1977 television film Raid on Entebbe. His role as an auto worker in the 1978 film Blue Collar was followed the next year by his performance as Parker in the science-fiction horror film Alien. He appeared in a supporting capacity in the 1980 prison drama Brubaker and guest-starred as mobster Charlie "East Side Charlie" Struthers in a 1983 episode of The A-Team. In 1987 he appeared in the futuristic action film The Running Man, and in 1988 he played FBI agent Alonzo Moseley in the action-comedy Midnight Run. A Paramount memo from the period indicates that Kotto was among the actors considered for the role of Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, a part that ultimately went to Patrick Stewart.

On television, Kotto is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Lieutenant Al Giardello, a Black Sicilian proud of his Italian heritage, in the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street, a role he held from 1993 to 1999. He also wrote scripts for the series and authored the book Royalty. Though he largely retired from film acting in the mid-1990s, he made one final film appearance in Witless Protection (2008) and returned to voice acting in 2014, reprising the role of Parker for the video game Alien: Isolation.

Kotto was married three times. His first marriage, in 1959, was to German immigrant Rita Ingrid Dittman; they had three children together before divorcing in 1976. His second marriage, to Toni Pettyjohn, also produced three children and ended in divorce in 1989. In 1998 he married Tessie Sinahon, who was from the Philippines. Raised in the Catholic faith, Kotto later embraced Judaism, crediting his father with instilling the religion in him, and incorporated Hebrew prayers into significant moments throughout his life. In 2000 he was residing in Marmora, Ontario, Canada. Kotto died on March 15, 2021, near Manila, Philippines, at the age of 81.