Early Life
Gossett was born in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York, to Hellen Rebecca (née Wray), a nurse, and Louis Gossett, Sr., a porter. His stage debut came at the age of 17, in a school production of You Can't Take It with You when a sports injury resulted in the decision to take an acting class. Polio had already delayed his graduation.
After graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1954, he attended New York University, declining an athletic scholarship. Standing 6'4" (1.93 m), he was offered the opportunity to play varsity basketball during his college years at NYU, which he declined to concentrate on theater. His high school teacher had encouraged him to audition for a Broadway part, which resulted in his selection for a starring role on Broadway in 1953 from among 200 other actors well before he entered NYU.
Read more about this topic: Louis Gossett, Jr.
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“All of Western tradition, from the late bloom of the British Empire right through the early doom of Vietnam, dictates that you do something spectacular and irreversible whenever you find yourself in or whenever you impose yourself upon a wholly unfamiliar situation belonging to somebody else. Frequently its your soul or your honor or your manhood, or democracy itself, at stake.”
—June Jordan (b. 1939)
“Death or life or life or death
Death is life and life is death
I gotta use words when I talk to you
But if you understand or if you dont
Thats nothing to me and nothing to you
We all gotta do what we gotta do”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)