Actor Paul Winfield, 62, dies of heart attack in Los Angeles

Paul Winfield, the diverse actor who rose to international prominence as the Academy Award-nominated sharecropper father Nathan Lee Morgan in the 1972 hit movie Sounder and as Martin Luther King in the miniseries "King," recently died of a heart attack in Los Angeles. He was 62.

Winfield was in ill health and suffered from diabetes. He died at a Hollywood hospital. His agent Michael Livingston told the L.A. Times that the actor had suffered from obesity for much of his life.

Several years ago, he went into a diabetic coma and was hospitalized for three weeks. He told the paper: "I knew I was diabetic, but didn't take it seriously. Now, I take it seriously."

Winfield was only the third Black actor to receive a Best Actor Oscar nomination when he received his nod for Sounder. He also received an Emmy nomination for his role in the 1978 "King" miniseries.

It wasn't until 1995, however, that the Los Angeles native actually took home an Emmy Award. He was singled out for his guest role as a federal judge in the drama "Picket Fences."

One of Hollywood's most versatile performers, Winfield excelled on stage, television and movies. He co-starred in the hit film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and played boxing promoter Don King in a 1995 HBO movie, a college chancellor who sang Negro spirituals to get Whites to donate money in "Roots: The Next Generation" and took on the challenges of Shakespeare, Chekhov and Ibsen on stage. He also performed opposite Denzel Washington in the play Checkmates.

He was cast as Diahann Carroll's love interest in her sitcom "Julia" in 1968.

In 1978, People Magazine named Winfield "the most ubiquitous Black TV/movie actor of the decade." Besides Sounder, he performed opposite Cicely Tyson in A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich.

Even though he was born in L.A., Winfield spent his early years in Portland, OR. His mother was a union organizer and Iris stepfather a construction worker. Although he won a scholarship to Yale University, he chose the University of Oregon. He attended several other colleges and left UCLA just six credits short of his degree in 1964 to star on stage in The Dutchman and the Toilet.

He later told the Los Angeles Times: "Since I am not particularly pretty and I can't sing or dance, I started off in television with lot of bit parts either as a Black activist or some type of psychopathic heavy."

After a lull in his career in the 1990s, he bounced back in a big way in 1998 when he was cast as the witty narrator of the A&E series "City Confidential."

Winfield is survived by a sister, Patricia Wilson of Las Vegas. AC JET press time, services were pending.