Poitier receives France's highest cultural honour

France gave actor Sidney Poitier its highest arts honour today at the Cannes Film Festival, where the culture minister praised him for tearing down barriers for black actors in Hollywood.

Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres told the 79-year-old actor: “You are the champion of equality between men.”

Poitier was named a commander in France’s order of arts and letters.

The actor, who won an Academy Award for Lilies of the Field in 1963, thanked his parents, who were field workers in the Bahamas, for giving him a sense of honesty, integrity and compassion.

He also thanked the directors who broke convention to hire him, calling them “men who chose to change that pattern because it was not democratic, it was not American, it was not human”.