Johnny Sekka

Johnny Sekka, who has died in California at the age of 72, built a name for himself in films in London in the 1960s, breaking new ground at a time when substantial roles for black actors were hard to come by. In the 1970s, when British cinema was going through hard times, he moved to the United States, but the good parts were still hard to come by. In retrospect, his London period was his most rewarding.

Born Lamine Secka in Dakar, Senegal, with a Gambian father and Senegalese mother, he experienced a tough, adventurous first 20 years. When he was very young his father died, and the family moved him to the Gambia to stay with an aunt in Georgetown. But he ran away to the capital, then known as Bathurst, where he struggled to survive alone and took jobs in the docks. His uncle tried to put him back in education but he went off to Dakar, where for a time he worked as an interpreter for the US military, and continued his self-education. Before he was 20, his desire to see Europe led him to stow away on a ship to Marseille, ending up in Paris, where he spent three years discovering the left bank and working in a Senegalese restaurant.

In the early 1950s he moved to London and joined the RAF, but in 1954 he met the West Indian actor Earl Cameron, who persuaded him to join the theatrical profession. From stagehand at the Royal Court in London he moved to the actors' group, then in its most exciting phase. In 1959, director Frith Banbury gave him his big break starring in a stage version of the Joyce Carey novel Mister Johnson. From there, he was offered a major part in his first film, Flame in the Streets, a race drama with Sylvia Syms and John Mills, following it with The Wild and the Willing, in which he played a student at a provincial university.

Although in the 1960s it seemed things were opening up for black actors, most film parts were for supporting roles like butlers and batmen, or at best African dictators. He managed to portray them with intelligence and style, appearing with stars like Laurence Olivier (Khartoum, 1966) and Orson Welles (Southern Star, 1969).

Film success brought television roles, and occasionally theatre, in which he pioneered parts such as Feste in Twelfth Night or the lead in Bakke's Night of Fame in 1968. His commitment against prejudice had already been seen in 1962, when he and Tony Richardson quit a Broadway musical called Kwamina because of objections to a black actor touching a white woman on stage.

The kind of part for which he seemed destined was the starring role in 1971 in Bullfrog in the Sun, based on Chinua Achebe's first two novels. It was, alas, ahead of its time, and hardly shown outside Africa. Problems also dogged the ambitious 1975 film Mohammad, Messenger of God, in which Sekka played Bilal, the prophet's disciple. It proved too controversial for the US because of objections from black Muslims.

In the early 1970s, as recession affected Britain, he moved to the US. His friend Sidney Poitier secured him parts in Warm December (1972) and Uptown Saturday Night (1974), and he was in TV series such as Good Times and Roots: the Next Generation, as well as the occasional Hollywood African potboiler like Ashanti (1979). His last role was as Dr Benjamin Kyle in the pilot for the sci-fi series Babylon 5 in 1993.

A good-looking, engaging man, with a rich speaking voice, above all he possessed style, and could handle a cigarette with the panache of Bogart or Belmondo. His last 10 years saw him spending most of his time at the ranch at Agua Dulce he had acquired in 1989.

He is survived by his wife Cecilia and his son Lamine.

· Johnny Sekka (Lamine Secka), actor, born July 21 1934; died September 14 2006

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