Joanna Shimkus and Sidney Portier
Becoming the first black person to receive the Best Actor Oscar goes to Sidney Portier. In 1964, he received the honor for “Lilies of the Field.” His guiding principle was to portray a black persona they could be proud of. Since there were so few positive portrayals of black people in movies at the time, he claimed he did it for his children. Despite being one of her final performances, Joanna and Sidney first met in 1969. She decided to give up performing after getting married to Portier. She hadn’t been in a movie since 1972. Thus, her comeback to television in 2018 came as a surprise.