Hollywood is grieving. Cicely Tyson, the multiple award winning actress on stage and screen, has passed away. She was 96 years old.
Whether she was giving life to Kunta Kinte in Roots or aging over 90 years for her double Emmy Award-winning turn in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Cicely Tyson did more than simply play a character. She became the women she portrayed. That was her plan.
“[When preparing for a role], it’s like meeting a person for the first time and wanting to know who they are,” she once said. “You want to know them as deeply as you can. You dig in order to get the substance. When I go on a set, I have the character in the palm of my hand.”
By Hollywood standards, Tyson got a late start.
In reality, she was in her 20s when she embarked on her creative path and as she would prove, the timing was just right. The daughter of Caribbean immigrants, she grew up in Harlem and began her career as secretary before trying her hand at print modeling.
Against her religious mother’s wishes, she set her sights on acting and found her way to the Off-Broadway stage, most notably in the play, The Blacks, and later ventured on to Broadway. By 1963, she earned a regular spot on the CBS series, East Side, West Side, on which she played a secretary and wore her tiny afro, proudly, for 26 episodes. That was just the beginning of a career that would stand the test of time, and then some.
more than the positives because if I have been able to survive it and reach another level, that has given me more growth, more strength, more confidence. [That has] enriched my life, more.” Cicely Tyson enriched our lives, too, and for that, we are most grateful.
Tyson released her Just As I Am: A Memoir, on Monday.
