Gregory Hines

Born: 14 February 1946
Where: New York City
Died: 9 August 2003

Tony Award-winning tap-dancing actor Hines starred in many films such as The Cotton Club and White Nights.

He won a 1992 Tony for the musical Jelly's Last Jam, and first found fame performing jazz tap with his brother Maurice, working together in the musical revue Eubie! and in Sophisticated Ladies.

Hines said his mother steered her sons toward tap dancing as a way to escape the ghetto. By the time he was six, Hines was already performing at the famed Apollo theatre.

Hines landed his first film role in the 1981 Mel Brooks comedy History of the World Part I, in which he played a Roman slave as a last-minute replacement for Richard Pryor.

Landing a leading role in Francis Ford Coppola's hit The Cotton Club in the mid-1980s cleared the way for more film work, including White Nights, in which he starred with Mikhail Baryshnikov and with Billy Crystal in 1986's Running Scared.

Hines also appeared with Whitney Houston and Angela Bassett in 1995's Waiting to Exhale, as well as A Rage in Harlem and Renaissance Man.

He directed the film Bleeding Hearts, about a white male teacher who falls in love with one of his black female students. Hines received several Emmy Award nominations, most recently in 2001 for his lead role in the mini-series Bojangles.

Hines, considered one of the top dancers of his generation, died of cancer at the age of 57.