Actor Louis Gossett Jr, who voiced Half-Life 2’s vortigaunts, has died

Actor Louis Gossett Jr, who has appeared in dozens of movies, tv exhibits, and performs—in addition to two videogames—died this week at 87, studies AP Information.

Gossett started appearing as an adolescent in New York, and as a younger grownup landed numerous roles in Broadway performs, together with 1959 basic A Raisin within the Solar. In 1977, he received an Emmy for his efficiency in TV miniseries Roots, and in 1983 he received the Oscar for Finest Supporting Actor for his function in An Officer and a Gentleman, changing into the primary Black actor to win the award.

He did not win any awards for it that I am conscious of, however Gossett additionally appeared in two of essentially the most well-known PC video games: Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One. In each video games, Gossett voiced the vortigaunts, pleasant aliens who had been previously subjugated by Half-Life’s interdimensional antagonists, The Mix. (In Episode Two and Half-Life: Alyx, the vortigaunts are voiced by Tony Todd.) 

In a single notable encounter in Half-Life 2’s coast part (the bit the place strolling on sand summons antlions), a pair of vortigaunts clarify that they usually talk with one another by “flux shifting” however that, “as a matter of courtesy” to these with impaired “vortal inputs” they’re going to use auditory language—besides once they don’t desire you to know what they’re saying. As quickly as they end addressing the participant, they return to talking in a melodic alien tongue.

Half-Life 2 and its first growth weren’t the one instances Gossett performed an alien. In 1985 cult sci-fi basic Enemy Mine—maybe what led him to the Half-Life 2 function—Gossett portrayed an alien stranded on a desolate planet with a human performed by Dennis Quaid.

In his memoir, An Actor and a Gentleman, Gossett described the racism he skilled as a Black actor in Hollywood—summarized in AP’s obituary—and in 2006, he created the Eracism Basis, whose mission is “to contribute to the creation of a society the place racism doesn’t exist.”

In his closing function, Gossett performed Ol’ Mister Johnson in final yr’s musical adaptation of The Colour Purple.

“You left behind so many tokens for us and paved the best way for Black Actors and Actresses,” wrote the movie’s lead actor, Fantasia Barrino-Taylor, in a put up in the present day. “You may be missed, however Man did you Dwell a Blessed Life.”

“We misplaced a real nice. A real legend,” wrote actor Colman Domingo, who portrayed Albert Johnson within the movie. “…We’re eternally indebted. Could we stand firmly on his shoulders. Elevate him up in the present day. R.I.P.”