Earle Hyman

Earle Hyman (October 11, 1926, Rocky Mount, North Carolina - November 17, 2017, Englewood, New Jersey) was an American stage, television, and film actor. Hyman was known for his recurring role on The Cosby Show as Cliff's father, Russell Huxtable.

Career
A native of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Hyman's parents, Zachariah Hyman and Maria Lilly Plummer, moved their family to Brooklyn, New York. Earle Hyman became interested in acting after seeing a production of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts. “The first play I ever saw was a present from my parents on my 13th birthday — Nazimova in ‘Ghosts’ at Brighton Beach on the subway circuit — and I just freaked out.”

He made his Broadway stage debut as a teenager in 1943 in Run, Little Chillun, and later joined the American Negro Theater. The following year, Hyman began a two year run playing the role of Rudolf on Broadway in Anna Lucasta, starring Hilda Simms in the title role. He was a member of the American Shakespeare Theatre beginning with its first season in 1955, and played the role of Othello in in the 1957 season.

Throughout his career, Hyman appeared in productions in both the United States and Norway (he is fluent in Norwegian) where he also owned a home on Norway's west coast and an apartment in Oslo. In 1965, won a Theatre World Award and in 1988, he was awarded the St Olav's medal for his work in Norwegian theater.

In addition to his stage work, Hyman appeared in various television and film roles including adaptions of Macbeth (1968), Julius Caesar (1979), and Coriolanus (1979). One of his most well known roles, that of Russell Huxtable in The Cosby Show, earned him an Emmy Award nomination in 1986 where he played the father of lead character Cliff Huxtable, played by actor Bill Cosby despite only being 13 years senior to Cosby. He was the third cousin of singer Phyllis Hyman.

Death
Hyman died at age 91 on November 17, 2017, at the Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey.

In June 2020, the Folger Shakespeare Library, a private research library in Washington D.C., acquired Hyman's personal items and memorabilia to be displayed as the Earle Hyman Collection. In personal correspondences Hyman wrote that he and Rolf Sirnes (1926-2004), a Norwegian seaman, had lived together for fifty years. Hyman described their relationship as a passionate friendship and wrote that Sirnes was his partner.

Connections to NorwayEdit
In Norway he was seen as a friend of the country and had a cabin in Skånevik.

Earle Hyman learned to speak Norwegian through Sirnes who was originally from Haugesund. In the 1990s they lived in New York City.