The actor died at a rehabilitation centre in Santa Monica, California. Although Gossett's exact cause of death is unknown, he had recently battled respiratory illness and prostate cancer.
In a statement obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, his family said, "It is with our heartfelt regret to confirm our beloved father passed away this morning. We would like to thank everyone for their condolences at this time. Please respect the family's privacy during this difficult time."
He was the second Black man to win an acting Oscar, following Sidney Poitier in 1964.
Gossett began his Hollywood career in 1959 as George Murchison in the original Broadway production of Lorraine Hansberry's familial tragedy 'A Raisin in the Sun'. He later co-starred alongside Poitier and Ruby Dee in Daniel Petrie's 1961 Columbia film adaptation.
His first major taste of national fame came from his eloquent performance in the eight-part ABC miniseries Roots, where he played Fiddler, an elderly slave who taught a young Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton) to speak English. Eighty-five per cent of Americans watched at least some of Roots, and in January 1977, the show's conclusion drew in over 100 million people.
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"All the top African-American actors were asked, and I begged to be in there," Gossett once said. "I got the best role, I think. It was wonderful."
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Gossett also starred in the critically acclaimed telefilm Sadat (1983), in which he played the assassinated Egyptian leader (Sadat's widow, Jehan, personally chose him for the part), and he portrayed a baseball immortal in Don't Look Back: The Story of Leroy "Satchel" Paige in a 1981 telefilm.
During his 60-year-plus career, Gossett excelled in a number of non-stereotypical racial roles, playing a hospital chief of staff on the 1979 ABC series The Lazarus Syndrome and the title character Gideon Oliver, an anthropology professor, on a 1989 set of ABC Mystery Movies.
Gossett went on to play an angry man living in a run-down apartment building in Hal Ashby's The Landlord (1970), a con artist opposite James Garner in the slavery-era Skin Game (1971), a drug-dealing cutthroat in The Deep (1977), a headmaster in Toy Soldiers (1991) and a down-and-out boxer in Diggstown (1992), as per The Hollywood Reporter.
(ANI)
