Yaphet Kotto could give a man authority without making him remote. We value him most in a group, where he makes the comedy funnier and the danger harder to dismiss.
Fi1m perspective
In Alien (1979), Yaphet Kotto’s Parker seems to have spent too much time with the rest of the crew. He belongs alongside Harry Dean Stanton and Tom Skerritt, sharing the unpolished ease of people who no longer need to impress one another. We were frightened for this crew because Kotto and the others made their everyday familiarity so convincing. Ridley Scott can take his time frightening us once the actors have made the people worth worrying about.
His breakthrough, as a Bond villain in Live and Let Die (1973), made obvious use of his imposing presence. The auto worker Smokey in Blue Collar (1978), directed by Paul Schrader, offered another use for it, grounded in work and the people doing it. Those parts suggest why casting him simply as a threatening figure was limiting. He could supply force, but his ease within a group gave a scene more than someone formidable to look at.
In Midnight Run (1988), Martin Brest lets Kotto’s FBI agent Alonzo Mosely be funny without behaving as though he knows he is in a comedy. His authority holds amid Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin’s quarrelling and the competing demands of the supporting cast. The pursuit sometimes interrupts conversations we would rather keep hearing, but Kotto helps make those interruptions welcome. Making Mosely foolish would have been the easy option; taking him seriously is much funnier.
The limitation was often the work available: heavies and authority figures, with fewer chances to lead a film. Even Alien leaves members of its crew less fully written than they deserve, asking the actors to make up the difference. Television gave Kotto a longer stretch as Lieutenant Al Giardello in Homicide: Life on the Street (1993–1999). The station commander was another authority figure, though the length of the part at least allowed more time in his company. Start with Midnight Run: Kotto takes the job seriously enough to make us laugh.
Biography
Yaphet Kotto was an American actor. He made his professional stage debut at the age of 19 in a production of Othello and later appeared on Broadway in The Great White Hope. He trained at the Actors Studio and began his screen career in the mid-1960s.
Kotto is known for his film roles including Carl in The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Dr Kananga/Mr Big in Live and Let Die (1973), Parker in Alien (1979), Dickie Coombes in Brubaker (1980), William Laughlin in The Running Man (1987) and Alonzo Mosely in Midnight Run (1988). On television he played Lieutenant Al Giardello in the series Homicide: Life on the Street (1993–1999). He also voiced Parker in the video game Alien: Isolation (2014).
Kotto was born in New York City on 15 November 1939 and died in Manila, Philippines, on 15 March 2021.
