RIP Yaphet Kotto: A criminally underrated character actor

Yaphet Kotto was never as appreciated as he should have been. He'll always be remembered fondly -- especially by fans of the underrated cop show Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-1999), which was a pre-cursor to HBO's The Wire, and Alien, where he steals pretty much every scene he's in, but his career was incredibly impressive and varied.

For instance, years before Forest Whitaker one the Oscar for portraying Idi Amin, Kotto turned in a creepy and memorable Emmy-nominated turn as the Ugandan dictator in the acclaimed TV movie Raid at Entebbe. 

He's also terrific in a more nuanced than usual blaxploitation film, 1972's Across 110th Street, where he stars opposite the legendary Anthony Quinn as a New York cop.

I first became familiar with him from his charismatic performance opposite Roger Moore as a villain in the James Bond film Live and Let Die. Kotto made history as the first black Bond villain, but he also has a lot to do in that movie (his character adopts a fake tough guy persona, Mr. Big) and has one of the more infamous demises in the franchise's history.

Years later I would come to appreciate his work -- in two very different '70s classics that have become two of my favorite films of all time: Blue Collar and Alien.

In Blue Collar, he is one of three leads (the others, Harvey Keitel and Richard Pryor) in Paul Schrader's look at autoworkers who get embroiled in criminal conspiracy involving their union. Pryor definitely has the flashiest role and Keitel is nominally the film's hero which leaves Kotto as the most mysterious and mercurial of the three. He's the one character who is implied to have actually had a criminal past and his imposing stature makes his character's fate especially shocking.

Kotto famously didn't get along with Pryor during the film -- in fact all three stars reportedly feuded and each thought they were the true star of that film, which probably meant making it was a nightmare but the real life tension provides tremendous on-screen tension and the movie is that much better for it.

The following year's Alien was an even bigger triumph for Kotto. Not only was the film an enormous hit but the movie and his performance in it are iconic. He bucked the trend of black guys dying first in movies like these and his chemistry with Harry Dean Stanton lends the movie some of its only accessible humanity.

Curiously, after this he was apparently offered the role of Lando Calrissian which eventually went to Billy Dee Williams. It'd definitely likely be a very different character if he'd taken on the role and while I'd never want to trade in Williams' suave charm, it's interesting to think about.

After that he popped up here in there and was always welcome -- like his slow burn FBI agent in Midnight Run -- and squandered a little bit of goodwill by behaving a little eccentric in his later years (he one claimed to have been aliens in real life).

And at 81, sadly, he's gone. He will always remain vivid in cinema history though, not many actors have one all-time classic movie on their resume, let alone three. But now hopefully people will appreciate his contribution to these movies more.