Richard Roundtree

Richard Roundtree. Shaft. , The modern image of the black male in cinema began with Richard Roundtree. As the charismatic private detective John Shaft in the wildly successful 1971 film Shaft, Roundtree created a black action hero of an entirely new kind: confident, hip, funny, triumphant over white antagonists, and possessed of a certain enjoyment of life. For American movie audiences of the 1970s, Roundtree was among the most recognizable of all the leading men in Hollywood., As Essence magazine pointed out, "Shaft is the first picture to show a black man who leads a life free from racial torment. He is black and proud of it, but not obsessed with it…Shaft keeps his blackness in perspective." The Shaft soundtrack album, recorded by Isaac Hayes, was also a huge success, winning two Grammy Awards and the Academy Award for Best Original Song., While Roundtree is best-known for his role as Detective John Shaft in Shaft and its two sequels, Shaft's Big Score (1972) and Shaft in Africa (1973), he also appeared opposite Laurence Olivier and Ben Gazzara in Inchon (1981). Other key films included the critically acclaimed 1995 movie Seven and the 2000 Shaft sequel where he reprised his role as John Shaft., On television he played the slave Sam Bennett in the 1977 television series Roots and Dr. Daniel Reubens on Generations (1989 - 1991) , the first soap opera to feature an African-American family from its inception. As a member of New York's renowned Negro Ensemble Company, one of Roundtree's best early stage roles was that of black heavyweight boxing champ Jack Johnson in "The Great White Hope." Prior to becoming an actor, he was a football player and a model., Born in New Rochelle on July 9, 1942, Richard Roundtree graduated from New Rochelle High School in 1961 and started on New Rochelle High's undefeated and nationally ranked football team in 1960. He live at 149 Remington Place.