“I think when you begin to think of yourself as having achieved something, then there’s nothing left for you to work towards. I want to believe that there is a mountain so high that I will spend my entire life striving to reach the top of it.”
This Sunday, Cicely Tyson, one of the greatest actors to ever grace the silver screen, will receive a long overdue Honorary Academy Award for a lifetime of masterful performances that have expanded the emotional possibilities of cinema. Of her essential, Oscar-nominated performance in 1972’s Sounder, we wrote as part of our 2018 Black Actress Canon, “Tyson, rooted in earth yet reaching a heavenly plane of catharsis, can close her hands around any emotion, embody it, and make us feel its full power. Sometimes all you need is a camera and a once-in-a-lifetime actress to create transcendent cinema.” Tyson turns 94 next month and shows no signs of slowing down. A tenacious trailblazer, she paved the way for luminaries (and eventual costars) like Angela Bassett and Viola Davis, among countless other contemporary black actors, who are able to shine in a spotlight that would likely not exist without Tyson’s hard work and humanizing artistry. Long live this remarkable and resilient goddess, whose creativity makes every single one of her characters matter. In Tyson’s hands, each new role is a new opportunity for limitless invention, another occasion to turn words on a page into a living, breathing, fully-dimensional being, the sublimest of gifts that any actor can give. Which is as it should be. For Cicely Tyson is, herself, the sublimest of gifts.
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