Paul Edward Winfield (May 22, 1939 – March 7, 2004) was an American television, film and stage actor. He was known for his portrayal of a Louisiana sharecropper who struggles to support his family during the Great Depression in the landmark film Sounder, which earned him an Academy Award nomination. He portrayed Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1978 television miniseries King, for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award. Winfield was also known to science fiction fans for his roles in The Terminator, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
[on Sounder (1972)] The love and devotion the Lee family expresses is what it is all about. This is the real black experience. [In most back films] those cats don't show any humor or emotions. They just get in and out of bed.
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My whole philosophy is if you're going to do something enjoy it -- even if it's a part that's serious. I guess it's the irrepressible comedian in me. Although I must say I don't enjoy watching my work. I have tapes and tapes of things I've done that I keep meaning to watch, but I never seem to get around to them. It's just not something I do, sitting around watching my old movies and saying, "Gee, look at how thin I was then.".
3
Since I am not particularly pretty and I can't sing or dance, I started off in television with a lot of bit parts either as a black activist or some type of psychopathic heavy.
4
I was given a lot of prestige as a distinguished black actor but very little power. They give prestige out by the buckets, but they give power by the teaspoon, just enough to stroke your ego.
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Fact
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Following his death, he was interred with Charles Gillan Jr. at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills) in Los Angeles, California.
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Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 579-581. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007.
3
Bred and showed black pug dogs for several decades until his diabetes forced him to stop.
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His Sounder (1972) on-screen leading lady, Cicely Tyson, also became his off-screen paramour. The two lived together for 18 months.
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Gifted at playing the violin and cello, he was given a scholarship to Yale University on these merits but turned the scholarship down.
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Was first impacted by the film Home of the Brave (1949), which starred African-American actor James Edwards in a leading role, not a typical supporting role as a servant.
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Winfield has been honored by Cord, the Black Publishers of America, the National Association of Media Women, the California Federation of Black Leadership, and Black Child Development Institution of Washington, D.C.
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In August 2000, Winfield appeared with John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra at Tanglewood on Parade, as narrator of "The Unfinished Journey".
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Received the NAACP Image Award for Best Actor and inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame.
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His mother, Lois Beatrice Edwards, was a union organizer in the garment industry; his stepfather, Clarence Winfield, was a construction worker.
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Winfield did not play an active role in the gay rights movement. His good friend actor-producer Jack Larson (Jimmy Olsen in Adventures of Superman (1952)) described him as "openly gay in his life if not in the media". Like many actors of his generation he concealed his homosexuality for fear of losing employment. Larson stated that Winfield had been distraught in his final years due to his longtime partner's death in 2002.
12
While at a dog show in Denver, Colorado in the late 1990s, Winfield fell into a diabetic coma and required three weeks of hospitalization.
Cousin of actor William Marshall, also known as Blacula (1972). Marshall and Winfield have appeared on Star Trek (Marshall as Richard Daystrom in The Ultimate Computer and Winfield as Capt. Terrell in Star Trek II (also on TNG as Darmok).
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There were originally more scenes of his character, Lt. Ted Traxler, in The Terminator (1984), that were cut to keep the film's pace moving but are now available on the special edition DVD from MGM. There were scenes that showed him and his partner-in-crime, played by Lance Henriksen, taking part in the chase sequence that ensues after the Tech Noir shoot out. The last two scenes took place in the police station that revealed that Traxler believed Kyle Reese, played by Michael Biehn, to be telling the truth--one taking place after the questioning of Reese and one where Reese and Sarah Connor, played by Linda Hamilton, are about to escape from the police station during the Terminator's, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, siege where Traxler gave Reese his gun and car keys.
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Won an Emmy Award in 1995 for his portrayal of Judge Harold Nance on the drama series Picket Fences (1992).
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Was a dog breeder in California. Bred pugs at his home.
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(March 5, 2002) His companion of 30 years, set designer and architect Charles Gillan Jr., has died of a rare bone disease in Los Angeles, California.
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