Louis Gossett Jr. Movies

Want to know the best Louis Gossett Jr. movies?  How about the worst Louis Gossett Jr. movies?  Curious about Louis Gossett Jr. box office grosses or which Louis Gossett Jr. movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Louis Gossett Jr. movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

Louis Gossett Jr. (1936-2024) was an Oscar®-winning American actor. Gossett Jr. was one of the most respected and beloved actors on stage, screen and television.  His acting career spanned over 7 decades.  He was also an accomplished writer, producer and director.   His IMDb page shows over 212 acting credits from 1957 tp 2024.   This page will rank Louis Gossett Jr. movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos, uncredited roles and movies that were not released in North American were not included in the rankings.

1982’s An Officer And A Gentleman

Louis Gossett Jr. Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

1985’s Enemy Mine

Louis Gossett Jr. Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Louis Gossett Jr. movies by his co-stars
  • Sort Louis Gossett Jr. movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost.
  • Sort Louis Gossett Jr. movies by domestic yearly box office rank
  • Sort Louis Gossett Jr. movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Louis Gossett Jr. movie received.
  • Sort Louis Gossett Jr. movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
1983’s Jaw 3-D

Best IMDb Trivia on Louis Gossett Jr.

1. Louis Cameron Gossett Jr. was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1936.

2. Louis Gossett Jr. conceived and co-wrote the well known song “Handsome Johnny” with Richie Havens. As the opening act for the original Woodstock, Havens performed “Handsome Johnny,” as the 8th song in that historic first set. According to Havens, “…(Gossett) had gotten it up to the ‘Dunkirk war’…I brought it up to date…”

3. Louis Gossett Jr. was originally cast as Gale Sayers in the television movie Brian’s Song (1971). Just days before shooting began, Gossett tore his Achilles’ tendon while working out for the film. The studio execs scrambled and quickly hired Billy Dee Williams as a replacement. Gossett, depressed over missing his “shot”, was promised by producer David L. Wolper the first great role that came along. About six years later, Wolper called Gossett to play Fiddler in Roots (1977), the Emmy® Award-winning role that made him a star.

4. Louis Gossett Jr. was cast in his Oscar® winning role in An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) after Jack Nicholson turned down the role, and none of the other actors who the producers wanted proved available at the time.

5. Louis Gossett Jr.  was the first male to be shown giving birth on screen, as Jeriba “Jerry” Shigan in Enemy Mine (1985).

6. On July 18, 2016, Louis Gossett Jr. co-hosted as a guest programmer on Turner Classic Movies’ primetime lineup. Allowed to choose four movies to air, he selected Blackboard Jungle, Lifeboat, Touch of Evil and The Night of the Hunter.

Check out Louis Gossett Jr.’s career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

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23 thoughts on “Louis Gossett Jr. Movies”

  1. Louis Gossett Jr, good actor, recently seen in the Watchmen series on cable TV.

    I’ve seen 13 of the 44 films on the chart. Favorites are – Enemy Mine, Iron Eagle, The Punisher, Toy Soldiers and The Deep.

    He was excellent in An Officer and a Gentleman but it’s not a film I watch often.

    My most watched Lou Gossett movie is probably Enemy Mine, very good as the alien who befriends his enemy, played by Dennis Quaid, when they are marooned on a hostile planet. A sci-fi remake of John Boorman’s Hell in the Pacific.

    It’s been ages since I saw The Choirboys, I think I may have seen that at the cinema too. I would watch anything back in the 1970s, especially if there was sex and violence. 🙂

    Good stuff Bruce. Vote Up!

    Reply

    1. Hey Steve. Thanks for the thoughts on Lou Gossett Jr. Like you…I have seen 13 of his movies. I even saw Firewalker in theaters…..it was actually a number one movie at the box office….but it died very quickly at the box office. I figured Enemy Mine would make your favorites list. I think we all agree that he was excellent in An Officer and a Gentlemen. I am pretty sure I have not seen The Choirboys….but the trailer looks interesting. Good stuff as always.

      Reply

  2. “Cogerson
    January 30, 2020 at 9:52 pm

    Another Joel subject and Oscar winner off the list of people to write pages on. Joel
    wrote about 410 people in his book, we have now written about 316 of them here at UMR.”

    COGERSON

    As usual you are connsolidating your reputation as The Work Horse. Well done – but you may wish to consider bringing more precision to that statement and the following revised wording is suggested

    “Another Joel subject and Oscar winner off the list of people to write pages on. Joel
    wrote about 410 people in his book [admittedly a lot of it c**p]. We have now written about 316 of them here at UMR.”

    Reply

  3. Lou certainly deserves his Cogerson page because on top of his prolific big screen career detailed above Lou has had an even more massive TV career having appeared in 116 television productions [wow!] between 1958 and the present, including the 1991 miniseries The Josephine Baker Story, for which he won a Golden Globe supporting award [IMDB credits him overall with 16 wins and 22 noms].

    He has, as far as I could find, 2 stage performances to his credit: one in 2006 [Dovark’s New World] and the other away back in 1964 which was a musical adaptation of Clifford Odets’ classic Golden Boy, the dramatic film version of which [along with his massive tax-avoidance long term incremental payout from Bridge on River Kwai] earned Bill Holden his nickname of Golden Holden back in the 1950s.

    Surprisingly, for someone so active for so long, Celebrity Net Worth lists Lou’s current net worth as just $3 million; though that site always points out that a performer might have been a big spender and saved just a limited amount of his earnings after taxes. Accordingly The Master’s comments, in his 9.35 PM post yesterday, about Lou’s earnings are [for once!] interesting.

    Lou has an overall jaw-dropping 11 cinematic projects currently announced or already at post-production/pre-production stage. WH has been profiling a lot of these ‘workaholic’ performers recently; he must feel that they are kindred spirits of HIS!

    Reply

    1. Hey Bob. Good comment on Lou Gossett Jr. Hmmmm…where to start….I would imagine his 11 projects in production will quietly hit the straight to dvd market…..still 11 projects for somebody over 80 is pretty impressive. I think he had a much more extensive stage career…especially when he first appeared on the scene in the early 1960s. He was in a stage company with James Earl Jones and they had some successes. Small….net worth compared to others in the entertainment field….but more than most people…heck three times what most people have. Good stuff as always.

      Reply

  4. I have never seen any of the Iron Eagle franchise so I most think of An Officer and a Gentlemen, The Deep, Jaws 3D, Toy Soldiers and The Punisher (1989) when Lou’s name comes up. The Gere/Winger flick was of course the high quality one for me and Lou’s tour de force performance will always be unforgettable.

    However The Punisher will always be equally memorable for me as my son who was 13 at the time got me to scour the video libraries for 2 hours back in 1989 to rent a copy of it for the evening, and after my travels we watched it together.

    My son loved it but I see that WH’s sources give it just a 54% rating. I think my son’s opinion should be regarded as the definitive one, though, as he is a yardstick of good taste in movie matters: he is the one who detests Laddie!!

    It should also be right up STEVE’s street too as in it Dolph Lundgren plays super action hero Frank Castle. Here’s what IMDB says is the storyline:

    “Based on the Marvel Comic, Dolph Lundgren is Frank Castle an ex-cop who lives in the sewers and acts as judge, jury, and executioner to the city’s criminals in retaliation for the unpunished murders of his wife and kids. Frank’s ex-partner Jake (Louis Gossett Jr.) finally catches up with the vigilante as he tries to stop the Japanese mob, which is trying to take over the city’s mafia operation.”

    Certainly if producers could be persuaded to confine Jace and Sly to the sewers in their action movies I might be persuaded to watch more of their films!! See also Part 2

    Reply

    1. Hi Bob, I enjoyed Dolph Lundgren’s The Punisher, watched it plenty of times back in my VHS days. It was the first Punisher movie, two more big screen ‘reboots’ of the comic book were filmed in recent times the most successful starring Thomas Jane and John Travolta. If your son liked it than he has good taste. 🙂

      Reply

      1. HI STEVEThanks for your feedback. I was of course talking abour the movie Punisher and not the fiend who wrote that 1983 book that WH worships.

        I had heard about the Travolta/Jane Punisher but hadn’t realised it was a 2nd vesion of the Lundgren flick. Thanks for sharing that info as I will ensure I see it because I like Jane ever since Deep Blue Sea in 1999.

        Thomas never quite made it to the top of the action hero table, did he? [Still gets a lot of work though: has 8 movies at pre or post production stage]. Dolph had a purple patch for a short while, which I think degenerated into the straight-to-video fare or Jace’s left overs.

        For my money Dolph was at his best as the villainIvan Drago – really menacing! Well he was Russian and that means he was a Red and so a villain.

        Bad-tempered tennis icon Jimmy Connors throws a tantrum at the net aagainst Czech Ivan for hitting a body serve at Connors. They both sit down between games and Connors continues his rant at Lendl. Suddenly he jumps up, rushes over to Lendl’s chair, brandishes his fists and shouts at Ivan “You do that again and I’ll flatten you. Got it? – you Commie!”

        “Commie indeed”: Lendl has 40 million dollars in the bank and is now an American citizen [since 1992]. Oh Hollywood and those Yanks generally back in their Red Scare days!”

        Reply

    2. Hey Bob…..glad you enjoyed The Punisher…..and glad you have that memory with your son. We agree about Gossett’s performance in An Officer and a Gentleman. It is shocking that the movie is now 38 years old. I much prefer The Deep to Jaws 3D…the only Jaws movie watching in my book is the first one…..the rest are poor sequels. Good stuff as always.

      Reply

  5. “Louis Gossett Jr. once said, “I’m still only earning half of what I deserve.” Judging from his recent work on film and television, the situation should change shortly. Gossett is an impressive actor, versatile and strong. He makes baldness as eloquent as Yul Brynner did years ago.” – Rating The Movie Stars Book (1983)

    4 Star Louis Gosset Jr. Movies – According to Rating The Movie Stars
    1961’s A Raisin In The Sun
    1973’s The Laughing Policeman
    1974’s The White Dawn
    1982’s An Officer and a Gentleman

    Reply

    1. Another Joel subject and Oscar winner off the list of people to write pages on. Joel wrote about 410 people in his book, we have now written about 316 of them here at UMR.

      Reply

    2. HI CTHULHU

      Your commets above suggest that you sympathised with Lou for not getting more money; and yet you had a down on Mr Brando for earning too muuch in your view. Hollywood producers, who are always looking a return on their capital, don’t give money away: they pay what they think a performer is worth at the box office.

      Accordingly, Lou is entitled to plead his case, but in response to YOUR sentiments regarding Lou’s percieved shortfall in his financial entitlements a character from one of Mr Wayne’s Cowboys and Indians movies might have been tempted to say to you:

      “White man either fool or he speak with forkred tongue!”

      Reply

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