‘Shaft’ Actor Richard Roundtree Dead at 81

Actor Richard Roundtree has died. Roundtree was born in 1942 in Westchester, New York, and performed for five decades on stage and screen. He was best known as the smart and tough private investigator, John Shaft. Many regarded Shaft as the first Black American action hero on film. Roundtree became a men’s health advocate after revealing his breast cancer diagnosis in the early 1990s. Richard Roundtree was 81 years old.