Once a healthy straight-shooter, Gossett’s life turned upside-down.

“I had an Oscar, an Emmy, and yet I had this big hole in my soul. I was in a pit of self-pity and resentment,” he told The New York Times in a 1989 article.

He entered a treatment program in Los Angeles, embraced Alcoholics Anonymous and returned to his faith. His life steadied.

“Thank God I was able to correct myself and turn it around,” he told CBS News in 2020.

He spent the final decades of his life in California and Georgia, but he is forever linked to his hometown.

Mayor Eric Adams saluted Gossett in a statement Friday, describing the actor as a “pioneer.”

“He made his hometown so proud and he will be truly missed,” the mayor said in the statement.

Louis Cameron Gossett, son of a porter and a nurse, was born May 27, 1936, in the melting pot of Coney Island, Brooklyn.

Popular and athletic, he attended Abraham Lincoln High School on Ocean Parkway, where he became his senior class president and starred on the basketball court and in the baseball field.

When an injury sidelined him, he performed in a school play to keep busy. A teacher impressed by his acting chops urged him to try out for “Take a Giant Step.” He won the starring role of the rebellious Spencer Scott, and then won critical acclaim.

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