Biography
Richard Roundtree (born July 9, 1942 in New Rochelle, New York) is an African-American actor and hero famous for portraying John Shaft in the film Shaft (1971) and in its two sequels: Shaft's Big Score in 1972 and Shaft in Africa in 1973.
He was a leading man in early 1970s Blaxploitation films. Prior to becoming an actor, he was a football player and a model.
He worked through the 1990s, although most of his later films were not well-received. Since 1990, however, he apparently was making a comeback as a cult icon. Roundtree had a part in David Fincher's critically acclaimed 1995 movie Se7en, the 2000 remake of Shaft as John Shaft's uncle, and guest-starred in several episodes of the first season of Desperate Housewives as an amoral private detective.
Roundtree was diagnosed with male breast cancer in 1993 and underwent a double mastectomy and chemotherapy for treatment of the disease.
