Legendary Hollywood actor and first black man to win an acting Oscar, Sir Sidney Poitier, has died at the age of 94, a Bahamian government official has said.

In 1964, he made history by clinching the Academy of Motion Pictures statuette for his work in Lilies of the Field, and went on to appear in dozens of films and television shows.

The actor had three box office hits with In the Heat of the Night, To Sir, with Love and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.

In the film In the Heat of the Night he delivered the iconic line: “They call me Mister Tibbs”.

He also directed a number of projects.

Sir Sidney was widely seen as the first black Hollywood star, with many of his film appearances highlighting issues faced by black people at the time.

As well as being a decorated actor, he was also an international diplomat, serving as the Bahamian ambassador to Japan in between 1997 and 2007, and to UNESCO between 2002 and 2007.

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He was knighted in 1974 and then in 2009, he was given the highest civilian honour in the US, the Presidential Medal Of Freedom, by President Barack Obama.

Sir Sidney also served on the board for the Walt Disney Company in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Star Trek actor George Takei was among the first to pay tribute to Sir Sidney, tweeting: “The star of Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner and Lilies of the Field, for which he won Best Actor, was a trailblazer who will be mourned by so many for whom he opened the very doors of Hollywood.”

Whoopi Goldberg added her voice to the tributes, writing that “he showed us how to reach for the stars”.

Born in Miami to a Bahamian family in 1927, he spent his early years living in the Bahamas, giving him dual US-Bahamian citizenship.

He got his start on stage in the late 1940s, and just a few years later he was a regular on the big screen.

Sir Sidney’s cause of death has not yet been announced.

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