In Memory of Cicely Tyson
We are saddened by the death of Cicely Tyson who passed on January 28, 2021, at the age of 96. Tyson was discovered by a fashion editor at Ebony magazine, rising quickly to the top of the modeling industry and in 1957, she began acting in Off-Broadway productions. Her career spanned more than seven decades revolving around the African-American experience on stage, film and television.
Which of her performances do you consider most memorable? If you are unfamiliar with her work, which performance do you most wish to see?
After voting, please express your condolences here.
Please see IMDb’s Remembering Cicely Tyson gallery and video.
Which of her performances do you consider most memorable? If you are unfamiliar with her work, which performance do you most wish to see?
After voting, please express your condolences here.
Please see IMDb’s Remembering Cicely Tyson gallery and video.
List activity
241 views
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
33 titles
- DirectorJohn KortyStarsCicely TysonEric BrownRichard DysartStory of a black woman in the South who was born into slavery in the 1850s and lives to become a part of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
- DirectorMartin RittStarsCicely TysonPaul WinfieldKevin HooksThe oldest son of a loving and strong family of black sharecroppers comes of age in the Depression-era South after his father is imprisoned for stealing food.
- DirectorMichael WilsonStarsCicely TysonVanessa WilliamsBlair UnderwoodCarrie Watts begrudgingly lives with her busy, overprotective son, Ludie, and pretentious daughter-in-law, Jessie Mae. No longer able to drive and forbidden to travel alone, she wishes for freedom from the confines of the house and begs her son to take her on a visit to her hometown of Bountiful. When he refuses, Mrs. Watts is undeterred and makes an escape to the local bus station, where she befriends Thelma, a young woman traveling home. When Ludie and Jessie Mae discover she is gone, they call in law enforcement to help, but Mrs. Watts is one step ahead of them and convinces the local sheriff to help her on her journey home to Bountiful.
- DirectorJoseph SargentStarsDon CheadleCicely TysonMekhi PhiferIn the 1940s South, an African-American man is wrongly accused of the killing of a white store owner. In his defense, his white attorney equates him with a lowly hog, to indicate that he didn't have the sense to know what he was doing. Nevertheless convicted, he is sentenced to die, but his godmother and the aunt of the local schoolteacher convince the schoolteacher to go to the convicted man's cell each day to try to reaffirm to him that he is not an animal but a man with dignity.
- DirectorWayne WangStarsAnnaSophia RobbJeff DanielsEva Marie SaintA mischievous dog befriends a lonely young girl in a new town and helps her make new friends.
- DirectorOz ScottMichael SchultzStarsRichard PryorCicely TysonAngel Ramirez Jr.Failed parolee Joe Braxton has one last shot at redemption: by driving school kids from Philadelphia to Washington State.
- DirectorTyler PerryStarsCrystal FoxPhylicia RashadBresha WebbDisheartened since her ex-husband's affair, Grace Waters feels restored by a new romance. But when secrets erode her short-lived joy, Grace's vulnerable side turns violent.
- DirectorDarren GrantStarsKimberly EliseSteve HarrisTyler PerryA couple's seemingly solid marriage begins to crumble when the wife discovers that her husband intends to divorce her.
- DirectorGeorge CukorStarsElizabeth TaylorJane FondaCicely TysonA pair of peasant children, Mytyl (Patsy Kensit) and her brother Tyltyl (Todd Lookinland), are led on a magical quest for the fabulous Blue Bird of Happiness (Nedezhda Pavlova) by the Fairy Berylune. On their journey, they are accompanied by the humanized presences of a Dog, a Cat, Light, Fire (Yevgeni Shcherbakov), Bread (Richard Pearson), and other entities.
- StarsLeVar BurtonRobert ReedJohn AmosA dramatization of author Alex Haley's family line from ancestor Kunta Kinte's enslavement to his descendants' liberation.
- DirectorTate TaylorStarsViola DavisEmma StoneOctavia SpencerAn aspiring author during the civil rights movement of the 1960s decides to write a book detailing the African American maids' point of view on the white families for which they work, and the hardships they go through on a daily basis.
- DirectorJon AvnetStarsKathy BatesJessica TandyMary Stuart MastersonEvelyn, an ordinary housewife, visits a nursing home and befriends the old lady Ninny. Together, they bond over stories from the past about two intrepid women of Whistle Stop Cafe.
- DirectorRobert Ellis MillerStarsAlan ArkinSondra LockeChuck McCannWhen deaf-mute Singer moves to a new town to be near his hospitalized friend, he makes an indelible impression on the lives of those around him.
- DirectorJulie DashStarsAngela BassettPeter Francis JamesTonea StewartA seamstress recalls events leading to her act of peaceful defiance that prompted the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.
- DirectorMichael AptedStarsLaurence FishburneDaniel WilliamsBill CobbsA former prisoner tries to save a neighbor youth from following him down the wrong path.
- DirectorPeter GlenvilleStarsRichard BurtonElizabeth TaylorAlec GuinnessA cynical Welsh hotel owner secretly romances a diplomat's wife in Haiti, under the violent reign of the despot "Papa Doc" Duvalier.
- DirectorRichard LinklaterStarsBryan CranstonLaurence FishburneSteve CarellThirty years after they served together in Vietnam, a former Navy Corpsman Larry "Doc" Shepherd re-unites with his old buddies, former Marines Sal Nealon and Reverend Richard Mueller, to bury his son, a young Marine killed in the Iraq War.
- DirectorBryan BarberStarsAndré 3000Big BoiTerrence HowardAt a sexy, sizzling nightclub, pianist Percival lives life by the rules, while Rooster, the club's flashy lead performer, struts his stuff on the stage. But all changes when greed, fame and murder threaten to destroy them and the joint.
- DirectorBill DukeStarsLaurence FishburneTim RothVanessa WilliamsBlack gangsters in 1930 Harlem fights Dutch Schultz who is trying to horn in on their numbers racket.
- CreatorPeter NowalkStarsViola DavisBilly BrownJack FalaheeA group of ambitious law students and their brilliant criminal defense professor become involved in a twisted murder plot that promises to change the course of their lives.
- CreatorBeau WillimonStarsKevin SpaceyMichel GillRobin WrightA Congressman works with his equally conniving wife to exact revenge on the people who betrayed him.
- DirectorDavid PlattStarsChristopher MeloniMariska HargitayRichard BelzerA former African child refugee's throat is slashed, and SVU connects the case to two former Ugandan war criminals--one a ruthless killer, the other a sympathetic former child soldier trying to change his life.
- StarsPaul WinfieldCicely TysonTony BennettThe story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., stretching from his days as a Southern Baptist minister up to his assassination in Memphis in 1968.
- StarsCicely TysonErika AlexanderBlair UnderwoodMama Flora reflects on her life from the 1910s through to the 1970s while trying to help her granddaughter get her life right and be a better mother for her son, all while bringing the family she has left back together.
- StarsCicely TysonJason BernardClifford DavidA film about the life and career of the African American abolitionist and slave escape leader, Harriet Tubman.
- StarsOprah WinfreyMary AliceOlivia ColeA multi-generational story of the lives of several black women who call an inner-city tenement home.
- StarsMelissa GilbertCicely TysonRonny CoxA young attorney goes to work with her late mother's best friend, a civil-rights activist, much to her conservative father's displeasure.
- StarsDiane LaneDonald SutherlandAmber BrookeThe movie, adapted from Allan Gurganus' 1989 book of the same name, chronicles the life of Lucy Marsden, a ninety-nine-year-old North Carolina woman who, at the age of fourteen, married a fifty-year-old Confederate veteran of the Civil War and bore nine children (reduced to six for television). Diane Lane stars as Lucy from her teenage years into middle age, and Anne Bancroft plays Lucy approaching her one hundredth birthday, telling her story in flashback.
- DirectorKrishna ShahStarsCicely TysonJames Earl JonesLouis Gossett Jr.An intimate look at life in the ghetto: Johnny Williams is a house painter who moonlights as a poet, struggling to financially and emotionally support his cancer-ridden wife Mattie. But times are tough and the poverty-troubled streets are even tougher, and it takes every ounce of Johnny's love and courage for the couple to make it through their strife, finding redemption in the River Niger.
- DirectorRalph NelsonStarsCicely TysonPaul WinfieldLarry B. ScottA troubled boy (Larry B. Scott) becomes addicted to heroin, and his mother (Cicely Tyson) and foster father (Paul Winfield) help him fight it.
- DirectorPeter LevinStarsCicely TysonMorgan FreemanRodrick F. WimberlyIn this touching story, a dedicated African-American teacher in an inner-city school in the midwestern United States facing tough odds helps inner-city children to succeed. Meanwhile, she faces an adversarial colleague and a principal who disapproves of her teaching methods. To top it off, a youth regularly messes up the classroom after school to tick the teacher off.
- DirectorMichael Toshiyuki UnoStarsCicely TysonPiper LaurieTess HarperJordan Roosevelt, at 65, found herself alone, destitute, and depressed. Up against the wall, she took heart from the suggestion of a friend, a blind woman who was a nurse: enter a foster care program in which one takes care of patients in their own home. The patients she cares for are Alzheimers sufferers, and she shares her home with three other women in advanced stages of the disease, one (Gayle) wheelchair bound. And with these women, Jordan realizes a lifelong dream - to feel the ocean breeze. An accidental find of a coffee can stash of cash, buried by her late husband, makes the trip possible. Based on the true story of Peggy Lee of Camilla, Texas (the Alzheimers, the patients, and the foster care program are actual, the trip to the Galveston beaches is fictional).
- DirectorCharles BurnettStarsEriq La SalleCicely TysonMichael MicheleAfter the death of his father, a former football star reunites with the family that he abandoned years earlier.