Geoffrey Holder

A Tony-winning actor, dancer, director and choreographer, Geoffrey Holder was a magnetic figure in multiple mediums - film, television, theater and advertising - for over four decades. Tall, sepulchral-toned and radiating refinement and good cheer from every pore, Holder established himself on the Broadway stage as a dancer and choreographer in the 1950s before branching into television and film as an actor who specialized in fantastic personas like his sinister Baron Samedi in "Live and Let Die" (1973) and the mystical and heroic Punjab in "Annie" (1982). On television, he embodied the warmth of the islands in much-loved commercials for 7-UP, among others, while his stage career included the original production of "The Wiz" (1976), which brought him two Tonys. Though his visibility dropped off in subsequent decades prior to his death in October 2014, Holder and his distinctively deep, Trinidadian accented voice remained an indelible part of the pop culture landscape - an immediately identifiable image and sound that suggested exotic lands, carefree movement and above all, an unquenchable love of life, which radiated in all of his work.