Shaft and Roots star Richard Roundtree a life in pictures | Film

The actor, who has died aged 81, became the first black action hero when he shot to stardom in the 1971 blaxploitation crime thriller Guardian film Wed 25 Oct 2023 10.01EDT Last modified on Thu 26 Oct 2023 05.19EDT

Shaft and Roots star Richard Roundtree – a life in pictures

The actor, who has died aged 81, became the first black action hero when he shot to stardom in the 1971 blaxploitation crime thriller

Guardian film

Main image: Fired up … Richard Roundtree as John Shaft in the 1971 film. Photograph: Mgm/Kobal/Shutterstock

Wed 25 Oct 2023 10.01 EDT Last modified on Thu 26 Oct 2023 05.19 EDT

  • Richard Roundtree as private detective John Shaft in the hit 1971 crime action thriller.

  • Roundtree became an icon for his role as the ‘black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks’

  • Shaft’s success meant a followup a year later: Shaft’s Big Score!, in which Shaft investigates the murder of a numbers racketeer

  • And along came a third in 1973: Shaft in Africa, in which Roundtree has to bust a people-trafficking network. With John Guillermin taking over from Gordon Parks Jr as director, it didn’t match the original’s commercial success

  • Roundtree played a daredevil bike rider in 1974 disaster movie Earthquake – seen here with Victoria Principal

  • Roundtree took the title role in Man Friday, opposite Peter O’Toole’s Robinson Crusoe, the 1975 ‘revisionist’ adaptation of Daniel Defoe’s novel

  • Arguably his most celebrated TV role, Roundtree appeared in the landmark slavery drama Roots, which aired in 1977, as Sam Bennett, who romances Leslie Uggams’ Kizzy in a section set in the early 19th century

  • Roundtree played a cop investigating a series of gruesome deaths in the 1982 cult monster horror Q: The Winged Serpent

  • Roundtree as Isaiah ‘Ice’ McAdams in Outlaws, the 1986 TV series about time-travelling cowboys

  • Roundtree made numerous guest appearances on hit TV shows; here he is with Will Smith on the set of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in 1996

  • Roundtree in 413 Hope St, the 1997 TV series co-created by Damon Wayans about a corporate executive who sets up a crisis centre after his son is killed for his sports shoes

  • Roundtree rejoined fellow blaxploitation legends in 1996 action film Original Gangstas as the subgenre regained its cult status. From left: Jim Brown, Ron O’Neal, Roundtree, Pam Grier and Fred Williamson

  • Shaft was remade in 2000 by Boyz n the Hood director John Singleton, with Samuel L Jackson in the lead role, playing the original Shaft’s nephew. Roundtree, left, had a cameo role

  • The Shaft remake got its own sequel in 2019, with three generations of Shafts. Jessie T Usher, left, is an FBI analyst; his dad (Jackson, centre) is a private investigator, and Roundtree, right, plays his grandfather

  • Roundtree at the New York premiere of Shaft in 2019

  • Roundtree with Taraji P Henson in 2019 film What Men Want, in which sports agent Henson can hear men’s thoughts – a gender-flipped version of the Mel Gibson comedy What Women Want

  • Roundtree at the Toronto film festival in 2022 to promote the Paul Weitz comedy Moving On

  • Roundtree died aged 81 in Los Angeles
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