Cult Actors #4: Yaphet Kotto - Coolness Personified
When Yaphet Kotto walks onscreen you take notice. Kotto has a presence that is regal, graceful and ferociously dignified. He is after all, the descendant of kings.
Yaphet Kotto walks onscreen you take notice. His broad 66 figure looms. He delivers lines with vocal cords that sound like theyve been massaged with sandpaper. In films like Alien (1979) he dominates the frame immovable, mountainous, impossible to scale. He has an air of regality about him, but then this to be expected. Kotto is after all, the descendant of kings. His father Njoki Manga Bell was a Cameroonian Crown Prince who immigrated to New York in the 1920s. It was in this city that Kotto was born and that mix of street kid and son of a prince would inform his personality onscreen. He can be both a regular Joe (the disgruntled worker in Blue Collar) or a powerful leader (he has played Othello more than once). But growing up in New York City was tough. Kotto, a black Jew, found discrimination around every corner and learnt early on the need for character. He learnt to stand tall. He began performing in his teens and appeared on a stage as Shakespeares Moorish Prince at the tender age of 19. He loved the intimacy of theatre but his command attracted attention elsewhere. In 1964 he made his screen debut in Nothing But A Man (1964) and later caught the eye in the Steve McQueen/Faye Dunaway vehicle The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) playing a professional heister. In a porkpie hat, dark glasses and a lean grey suit he predates the Ska movement by a good ten years and almost manages to out cool McQueen:
How you doin, Chief? asks one of his fellow hold-up men. OK, Baby, he replies. OK.Then came Bone. Largely forgotten in Kottos back catalogue, Bone holds up as perhaps one of his most daring pieces of work. The film marked the directorial debut of indie auteur Larry Cohen (later the director of Its Alive in 1973) and told the story of an affluent white couple in Beverly Hills who are terrorised by Kottos thief/rapist Bone. In this film reality is dreamlike and Bone is a manifestation a fantasy the white excuse.
Hes the justification they need for staying out of black neighbourhoods. Bone, youre just as I imagined youd be, whispers housewife Bernadette. Kotto towers over them. Indeed, he revels in his status as a stereotype, using what he calls, the nigger mystique, to terrify white racists. He walks with a swagger and watches Bernadette with penetrating brown eyes. Sweat seeps through his clothes and drips from his dark skin like an oozing sexuality. Hes the rapist black demon from a white nightmare, Just a big black buck doing whats expected of him, as he puts it.Following Bone (known in the UK as Dial Rat for Terror) Kotto had a run of successes. In 72 he was the college educated Lieutenant William Pope in the gritty, street level Across 110th Street. Pope is the one good cop in a department of corruption and institutionalized racism. He refuses bribes, Stick it up your ass, brother, and remains aloof from the depravity around him. In a sharp black suit and Malcolm X style glasses, Kotto brings nobility that couldnt be further from his portrayal of Bone the same year. He appears to slip into character easily, but by his own confession this is not the case. In 1973 he became the King of the Caribbean underworld in the James Bond adventure Live and Let Die and got lost in his role. Kotto played the dual parts of Mr Big/ Dr Kananga as a man in awe of Bond. He copies Bonds suits, his love of women, gadgets and cars and Kotto began to do the same in real life. Outside of the film he insisted on being driven in limousines, only stayed in the finest hotels, he drank champagne and travelled the world like his own version of an international playboy spy. It took me three years to stop this foolishness, he later admitted.
For his role as Parker in Alien he also applied a method approach. The tough talking, hard-as-nails mechanic was a powerhouse man of action, and Kotto refused to believe that the slick black creature could kill him. He was fired up and would corner director Ridley Scott everyday barking: Im gonna kill it, man. Theres no way it can kill me. Indeed there is a scene in the film where a shipmate is trapped by the alien and Parker stands his ground and will not leave her to die. Despite the creatures lethal invulnerability, Kotto is so commanding that for a second, we believe he could tear it apart. With Ridley Scott more focused on the visuals, this performance was all Kotto. The actor was keen to improvise and liked to keep the other cast members on their toes. He would repeatedly interrupt up-an-coming star Sigourney Weaver at pivotal moments, intending to break her flow and get a real reaction. Her ultimate onscreen explosion was genuine. Yaphet likes to stir things up, observed co-star Tom Skerritt. Following Alien Kotto was invited by Irvin Keirshner (who had directed Kotto as Idi Amin in the TV movie Raid on Entebbe in 1976) to stay in space and take the part of Lando Calrissian in his Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back (1980). Kotto refused, fearing that the character would be killed and he would become typecast. While he was wrong about Landos chances of survival, actor Billy Dee Williams has since struggled to shake the part off. Kotto perhaps made the right move. Since then he has continued to mix things up. He was in the Robert Redford prison movie Brubaker and on the small screen appeared in The A-Team, the mini-series Roots and the award winning Homicide: Life of the Street as Lt. Al Giardello. Back on film he ran a post apocalyptic gauntlet alongside Schwarzenegger in The Running Man (1987) (looking a little middle-aged and paunchy in his red and grey addias jump suit) and stole cigarettes as a befuddled FBI chief in the exceptional De Niro movie Midnight Run (1988). 
Now well into his 70s Kottos attentions have turned elsewhere and last year he wrote his first novel Kiss of the Chiang Shin. It may concern his fans that this intense actor hasnt been onscreen since 2008 but Kotto isnt worried. Time is on his side. Im not that old, thank God, he told a reporter. Im still cool. Damn right. Cult Actors #3 Rutger HauerCult Actors #2 Adrienne Barbeau Cult Actors #1: Brad Dourif