Yaphet Kotto, an Emmy Award-nominated actor best known for his role in the TV police procedural drama Homicide: Life on the Street, as well as in films like Alien, The Running Man, Live and Let Die, has died at the age of 81.
According to his wife of 24 years, Tessie Sinahon, Kotto passed away Monday, March 15th. A cause of death was not immediately made public.
The Harlem native portrayed police lieutenant Alphonse “Gee” Giardello throughout Homicide’s seven season run from 1993 to 2000, appearing in a total of 122 episodes. The NBC drama received universal acclaim, winning multiple Emmys, Peabodys, and Television Critics Association Awards.
Kotto will also be remembered for on-screen roles in Alien, where he played the space traveler Parker; in the James Bond film Live and Let Die as the villain Mr. Big; and in Raid of Entebbe, for which he received an Emmy nomination for his portrayal of a brutal Ugandan dictator.
Also worth noting are the two roles that Kotto famously turned down: In 1980, Kotto was approached about playing Lando Calrissian in George Lucas’ Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back. Having recently appeared in another space blockbuster Alien, Kotto feared he would become typecast, and thus turned down the role in favor of Robert Redford’s Brubanker. (Billy Dee Williams ultimately portrayed Lando instead.) Kotto also passed on playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation before Sir Patrick Stewart took the part.
As The Hollywood Reporter points out, Kotto later expressed regrets over not taking the Star Trek role: “I should have done that, but I walked away. When you’re making movies, you’d tend to say no to TV. It’s like when you’re in college and someone asks you to the high school dance. You say no.”
