Earl Cameron (1951)
*Earl Cameron was born on this date in 1917. He was an Afro Caribbean Black British actor.
Earlston Jewett Cameron was born in Pembroke, Bermuda, and grew up on Princess Street, Hamilton, UK. His father was a stonemason who died in 1922, after which Cameron's mother took on various jobs to support the family. As a young man, Cameron joined the British Merchant Navy.
Cameron faced racism as a Black trying to find employment; he was a dishwasher in a hotel and had to accept whatever casual work came his way. In 1941, his friend Harry Crossman gave Cameron a ticket to see a revival of Chu Chin Chow at the Palace Theatre. Cameron, working in the kitchen of the Strand Corner House at the time, was fed up with menial jobs and asked Crossman if he could get him on the show. He told Cameron that all the parts were filled, but two or three weeks later, when one of the actors did not show up, Crossman arranged a meeting with the director, who cast Cameron on the spot.
He and five other Blacks had bit parts in the West End production. With his appearance in 1951's Pool of London, Cameron became one of the first Black actors to star in a British since the 1930s. He starred alongside Sean Connery in Thunderball (1965). He appeared in many 1960s British science fiction programs, including Doctor Who, where he was reportedly one of the first Black actors to play an astronaut on television, The Prisoner, and The Andromeda Breakthrough.
Beginning in 1963, Cameron practiced the Baháʼí Faith, joining the religion at the first Baháʼí World Congress. In the mid-to-late 1970s, Cameron stopped acting. He and his family moved to the Solomon Islands, during which time he ran an ice cream business in Honiara. Following the death of his wife Audrey in 1994, Cameron returned to the U.K. and resumed acting.
Cameron appeared in "The Interpreter" with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn (2005), "The Queen" with Hellen Mirren (2006), and "Inception" (2010). His film appearances continued until 2013, when he was 96. Cameron was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2009 New Year Honors. The Earl Cameron Theatre in Hamilton, Bermuda, was named in his honor at a ceremony he attended there in December 2012. The University of Warwick awarded Cameron an honorary doctorate in January 2013.
In 2015, the British Film Institute (BFI) featured a special presentation and screening to honor Cameron. In 2019, the Bermuda Arts Council established the Earl Cameron Award—for "a Bermudian professional who has demonstrated exceptional passion and talent in the field of theatre, cinematography, film or video production"—in his honor. Earl Cameron died in England on July 3, 2020, at 102, surrounded by his wife and family. He had six children, five by his first marriage.
