Thomas Jefferson Byrd was not a household name, he wasn't even a household face -- but if, like me, you're a Spike Lee fan, he was an unforgettable presence in a number of the iconic director's movies.
News broke today that the distinctive character actor has been gunned down and killed in Atlanta, Ga. The details aren't yet known about what the motive was, if any, for this killing, but the film world has lost yet another great talent in a long line of untimely deaths this year.
I probably first saw Byrd in Lee's satire Bamboozled, where he played a performer who willingly takes over the blackface performer mantle when the film's heroes walk away from the offending variety show series at that film's center. In one of the funniest bits in that movie -- or any Lee movie -- Byrd can be seen hawking a fictional malt liquor called Da Bomb.
Byrd was a distinct looking actor -- long, drawn, and pock marked -- he has a colorful, authentic delivery and unpredictable flair on-screen. He could be a grounded, humane character like the father struggling to connect with his son that he played on Get On the Bus or he could be a more heightened character like the pimp Sweetness in the movie He Got Game.
His last appearance on film was in 2015's Chiraq, a film I didn't love as much as others, but was almost certainly enhanced by his presence.
I'm not sure where is career and life had taken him over the last five years. Besides a Tony nomination in 2003 for his supporting role in the August Wilson play Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (itself soon to be a feature film starring another 2020 casualty, Chadwick Boseman), most people recognized him as a part of Lee's repertory company.
To learn that this weekend, at age 70, Byrd was found shot multiple times in back is both horrific and terribly sad. He was a very authentic, warm-hearted and intelligent actor and it's another sobering reminder of how lucky we are to be alive and how precious life can be.
Rest in power, Thomas Jefferson Byrd.
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