Lou Gossett Jr./Coming of Age/Spring 2008/by Kelly Oden

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Presented by Council on Aging of West Florida

Spring 2008

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Exclusive Interview with Oscar Winner

Louis Gossett Jr.

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Louis Gossett Jr.

By Kelly Oden

Film buffs know Louis Gossett Jr. In 1983, this actor, already with a lifetime of experience under his belt, took the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in An Officer and a Gentleman. Besides the Oscar, his achievements have landed him nearly a dozen other awards and even more nominations, not including the recognition his social efforts have gained him.

An active and social guy, Gossett says he loves nothing more than meeting his fans. But behind the public exterior is the old-fashioned fellow from Brooklyn who values family, tradition and respect for others.

Gossett took some time out of his busy schedule to have a chat with COA. COA: I wanted to start from the beginning. I know that you were born in Brooklyn. I wanted to see what you took with you from growing up in Brooklyn, and how that experience influenced your life and what you took with you.

LG: It was right after the Depression, and everyone was kind of in the same boat. That’s when apples and stuff were expensive—you know, nobody had any money. But what seems to happen with people, especially in America, is that we tend to stick together—especially the children; they get better taken care of. If my parents didn’t get home from work by a certain time, I had a choice, and my choice was very international. I could have Gefilte fish; I could have lasagna, I could have corned beef and cabbage; I could have fried chicken, depending on who got home first. My friends were very different. And some of those people who I went to school with are still my friends today. There’s something about the insulation of a neighborhood in times of crisis and times of joy, which I don’t see too much of anymore. Everybody was taken care of. Nobody could get too bad. Before we had cell phones, we had old ladies in the windows as the sentinels.

COA: So it’s fair to say that you credit that upbringing and that tight neighborhood feel for a lot of your success as a person.

LG: Yes, for my success as a person, and it really was the success of America, until just recently. It’s called back to basics. Back to the basics of taking care of one another, taking care of all children, making sure our children have things better than [we] had it, remembering history.

COA: So at that time period, growing up, who were your greatest influences? Whom did you look up to as a boy?

LG: My greatest influence, ironically, was my great grandmother. She had to be a slave, because we have records of the births and deaths in our family recorded in the Family Bible. The Bible was started out when the slaves were freed, and her birth was not recorded in the Bible. So we did some crude arithmetic, and she remembers me in my first play, which was 1953. So by the time she died in 1956 or 1957, we figured out that she had to be approximately 115 years old.

She was a big influence on my cousins and myself. It was the style of the family—if you’re old enough to work, and you could work, you had to work. The children were raised by the elder women. Now, she was the matriarch, my great grandmother.

COA: And what was she like?

LG: She was incredible. I remember being sick, and she would COMING OF AGE

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COA: Let’s talk about your Eracism Foundation.

LG: As far as the African Americans and the minorities are concerned, they’re almost about to forget Martin Luther King, and forget the rest of their culture. Take it from the neighborhood I grew up in. The synagogues, and the temples and the cathedrals—these children would have to go once a week to learn behavior patterns and spirituality and a desire for success, especially at the synagogue.

I’ve put together a center called the Shamba Center, and in that center, I have requested some of our experts speak to children on conflict resolution, on AIDS prevention, on hygiene, on knowledge of history, on the behavior patterns and the discipline that one needs to be a responsible adult. It’s not taught anywhere in the home, in the neighborhood, or in the schools anymore. Obviously, by the time they get to the schools, a teacher has to be a police officer, a doctor, a lawyer, and the least thing they do is teach. So hopefully, this program will get a young child, and by the time they get to a responsible age, in school, they’re going to school to learn, and get better.

do something. She would put some stuff in an oven and put it on my chest, or if I got a wound, she would do something else.

She never knew regular medicines, but she had years of making these ointments… if there was a big flu, or whatever they call it, or the polio thing going around, my cousins and I, we didn’t get it, but we were very unpopular, ‘cause we smelled terrible.

COA: Were there people of the moment, celebrities of the time, whom you looked up to?

LG: I was fortunate enough to be in the mix, on Broadway, at the age of 15. The first black president of Actor’s Equity was a man by the name of Fredrick O’Neil. There was a woman who was in it named Maxine Sullivan, a big singer who was a contemporary of Ella Fitzgerald, Leena Horne, Josephine Baker.

Through them, I met some pretty great people. There was a woman by the name of Jane White, whose father predated the NAACP, and through those doors, I ran into Josephine Baker, Paul Robeson, and of course, my contemporaries Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn, and of course Sidney Poitier and Steve McQueen and Paul Newman. All the greats. Jackie Robinson was always a very good friend and Roy Campanella who was on the Brooklyn Dodgers. I was a celebrity, and so were they. They were rubbing elbows. I was rubbing elbows with those elbows. I took their wisdom, and I got the chance to learn a very great deal. So when I got to 19 years old, and I did my first film called the “Bush Baby in Africa,” I knew what to look for, and my curiosity was strong. One more time: the elders—extremely important. So this is not grandma and grandpa in a wheelchair. This is wisdom. And we have children now, both successful and unsuccessful, that don’t think we have anything to offer.

COA: About your career: where do you keep your Academy Award, and what was it like to win that award?

LG: My Academy Award, along with the three Emmys, and the Golden Globes and the Peoples’ Choices, are all on three shelves, in the living room, by the window. And I watch them, and I thank God every day when I see them. It’s pretty impressive, and I don’t know who that guy is (laughs).

COA: Was it overwhelming to win those awards? Especially the Academy Award, the sort of end-all for your profession.

LG: It was overwhelming to win. Once again, it was just incredible. More overwhelming was the responsibility that came with it during the 80s. I experienced, at the time, when Sydney Poitier won his, there was just Sydney Poitier in the movies. And then, for a while, it was just me. There’s a lot of pressure there. And then there was Morgan Freeman and Cuba Gooding and Jamie Fox and Denzel Washington, and they’re a wonderful bunch of people. It still wasn’t enough for me. The money that came with the Oscar—I had a wonderful life, which probably gave me an indication that life is about more than money. It’s about family and success and health and goodwill.

COA: That kind of leads me into a quote that I read of yours, and I hope it’s accurate, about having a responsibility to clean up your act as an artist. You said ‘we can’t always be like Britney Lohan.’

LG: I didn’t mention any names. I’ll tell you, it’s our responsibility as people, as mature people. The most important commodity on this planet are our children. It’s not gold; it’s not oil, or prestige and power and all that. It always had been, and always will be, the mentoring of our young. They’re our future. And they are leeches in a sense. They watch like hawks what we do, and they get how to do it by us. Today, they get how to do it through television, and get some negatives, which are kind of bright lights in the streets, and in the gangs. So, if we don’t assume the number one responsibility, of caring for children, much more than just our own, they’re going to take measures into their own hands, and some of it is immature and illegal. We can’t bring them up if they have not been taught properly.

COA: So, do you think that it is a responsibility, that when you decide to become a public figure, you take on the responsibility to be a role model?

LG: Well, being a public figure makes you put a light on it, but that responsibility is in every adult.

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Above: Louis Gossett Jr., following his acceptance of the Millennium Momentum Foundation’s “Humanitarian of the Year” Award.

On par with acting is Gossett’s passion for working with children and teaching them the lessons he has learned while growing up. Above, Gossett attends a Los Angeles—Area function aimed at getting children involved with their community.

COA: You’ve struggled in your own time with addiction, and I was wondering if you had any advice for people who are struggling with addiction or for people whose families are struggling with those same issues.

LG: Well, mine came with success. Focusing your happiness and your satisfaction and your completion in life on something outside of God and outside of yourself will always disappoint you. You will get resentment, and you’ll get fears, and you can’t focus on anything positive. After my Oscar, I got no work. I blamed it on racism and all kinds of stuff. I blamed it on myself for reaching for that particular pinnacle that I heard from folks was practically impossible and the people who surrounded me with the negatives. It was not satisfying, and it did not work. So, my advice is that it is an inside job. It’s a COMING OF AGE

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journey. It’s not the success; it’s not the money, but the incredible belief in something stronger than yourself that never moves. Even if it’s your mother or father who you love and idolize, they will disappoint you at one point or another. The thing that does not is a belief in God, or Krishna, or Buddha, or Allah, whoever you might believe, who says that things are better if you work for them. And they were in charge before you were born, and they’re in charge while you’re alive, and they’ll be in charge after you’re gone. But God, who created all these philosophies, is stronger than anything that we could ever be, or any civilization or anybody.

The belief for your fellow man, your responsibility for the children, behaving in an exemplary way to one person at a time—all of these precepts that seem to be going under the rug, if you want to call it that, are things most necessary for our survival as a people. On that level, self-abuse has no place.

COA: You have dedicated this portion of your life to humanitarian work, and I know that Pope Benedict recognized you for your work. What was it like to receive that honor, and to be called out

by Pope Benedict for your work?

LG: Pope Benedict, as we all are, is a messenger, and I feel as if it’s a message. The funny thing is, that when he came to Rome—they have a little theatre for the Pope—and the first movie he saw was An Officer and a Gentleman. I had no idea that my audience was that far-reaching.

COA: I was very moved when I read the story about the adoption of your son.

LG: Actors are very sensitive and caring people, as you know. I was there with Edward Almos and Jon Voight, a very great man, and Jesse Jackson at the time, and we marched on Washington for the homeless, and Ingrid Bergman’s daughter, Pia Lindstrom, worked for “Good Morning America,” and their special over a six or seven week period was about how many children are homeless in the major cities of America.

So, I was sent to St. Louis, when Pia Lindstrom, on television, went to a boy, and she stuck a microphone in his face, 38

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and said ‘If you had one wish, what would it be?’ He said, ‘I want some place to stay, and something to eat.’ So he was going to be the poster child, and for me, the bottom line for every child in America, and indeed, the world, is that they should have free education, free healthcare, free shelter, free clothing and love. I meant it. So I asked him, ‘Do you want to live with me?’And he said yes.

Now, I have two grandchildren from him. He’s 29. He was in my family from the age of eight.

COA: What do you see as big issue for today’s seniors?

LG: For today’s elders? For them to realize that they’re in the most important part of their life. The message and the wisdom that they learned throughout their lives are necessary to pass on to the younger generation, whether the younger generation appreciates it or not.

COA: What is your take on aging, and what is your approach to growing older?

LG: I hate it (laughs). I hate the fact that I can’t play basketball anymore, but I get to sit in the front row and fantasize. The little aches and pains and little illnesses—I have to pay more attention to my body and to my steps and to my movements. But it’s all still there and still working, thank God. I don’t think about death. I think about life. If I take care of myself, it’s God’s call when he wants me to go with him.

COA: Do you feel a sense of a better understanding of the world and of life as you age?

LG: Much better. There are a lot of dots that you can connect from your experiences. We all say, ‘If I had this to do over, these are things I would do.’

But we all know that there are no accidents. We just have to learn from our experiences.

COA: What is your idea of a perfect day?

LG: A perfect day? A day absent of pain and negative events—a day where I’ve been able to show nothing but God’s light to someone else. A day to go from sun up to sun down—an uneventful day where most of the things are positive.

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