Actor Paul Winfield has died of a heart attack. He was 62.

From Leonard Maltin’s Movie Encyclopedia, reprinted on IMDB:

This imposing black actor first came to the attention of TV audiences opposite Diahann Carroll on the sitcom “Julia” from 1968 to 1971, and he’s done some of his best work on the small screen, especially as civil-rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in “King,” a 1978 miniseries. Winfield’s feature-film success has been limited to a few choice roles, notably the dignified sharecropper in Sounder (1972, for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination), but he’s had plenty of movie work over the last two decades without falling into the blaxploitation quagmire. He debuted in The Lost Man (1969), and was visible in R. P. M (1970), Conrack, Huckleberry Finn (both 1974), The Greatest (1977), Carbon Copy (1981), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Blue City (1986), The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), and James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket (1989). He had a particularly thankless time going up against murderous cyborg Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator (1984). Winfield’s outstanding performance as an animal trainer trying to “break” a dog programmed to attack blacks in Samuel Fuller’s White Dog (1982) was unseen for many years because Paramount shelved the movie, embarrassed by its subject matter. He had a good supporting role as a judge in the courtroom drama Presumed Innocent (1990), but his best parts in the past 15 years have mainly been on stage or in TV dramas, including the miniseries “Roots: The Next Generation” (1979), “Alex Haley’s Queen” (1993), and “Scarlett” (1994).

OTHER FILMS INCLUDE: 1972: Brother John 1973: Gordon’s War 1975: Hustle 1976: Green Eyes (telefilm); 1977: Damnation Alley, High Velocity, Twilight’s Last Gleaming 1978:A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich 1984: Mike’s Murder, Go Tell It on the Mountain (telefilm); 1987: Big Shots, Death Before Dishonor 1993: Dennis the Menace