LOS ANGELES (AP) – Julius Harris, a stage and screen performer who broke stereotypes of movie roles for black actors, has died. He was 81.
Harris died Sunday of heart failure at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital, a hospital spokeswoman said.
A former member of the Negro Ensemble Company in New York City, Harris played the villainous Tee Hee in the Bond film “Live and Let Die” and a gangster in the ‘72 classic “Superfly.”
He appeared in more than 70 film and television productions in an acting career that spanned four decades. His roles included a preacher in the 1982 Civil War miniseries “The Blue and the Gray” and Ugandan President Idi Amin in the TV movie “Victory at Entebbe.”
“Even today, if I am walking in a black neighborhood, people call me by my ‘Superfly’ name – Scatter,” Harris told the Los Angeles Times last October before being honored with a tribute at the Directors Guild of America Theatre.
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