Howard Rollins Jr

Elisa Leonelli

  • Howard Rollins Jr. was born on October 17th, 1950.

  • His film debut in 1981’s Ragtime earned him Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actor as well as a nominator for the latter’s New Star of the Year award. 

  • In 1982, he received a Daytime Emmy nomination for his role playing Ed Harding on the soap opera, Another World.

  • He played Medgar Evans in the TV movie, For Us the Living: The Medgar Evers Story, earning a NAACP Image Award nomination in 1983.

  • In 1988, he started playing the lead role of Detective Virgil Tibbs on the NBC TV show, In the Heat of the Night. 

  • He was arrested several times as a result of his struggle with an addiction to drugs and alcohol during his time on the the show. 

  • During season 3 of In the Heat of the Night, he took six weeks off to seek treatment in rehab.

  • By the end of season 6 of the show, Howard had three outstanding warrants against him and was fired.

  • After becoming sober, he would occasionally return to guest star during season 7.

  • He appeared in the 1992 TV movie, With Murder in Mind, made a guest appearance in 1995 on New York Undercover, and in 1996 on Remember WENN.

  • His final film role was in the 1996 TV movie, Harambee!

  • In the fall of 1996, was diagnosed with AIDS.

  • Six weeks later, Howards Rollins Jr. died of a bacterial infection caused by complications of lymphoma on December 8th, 1996. He was 46 years old.

  • After his death, his “friends” and neighbors revealed to a tabloid that for years he led a secret life dressing up in women’s clothes, frequenting gay bars and looking to pick up men while dressed as his drag persona, “Tooraloora Goldfarb.”

  • According to them, towards the end of his life, he only found comfort in dressing up as his drag persona.

  • His “friends” had alleged in the tabloid that he joked to them that he wanted to be buried as a woman “in a gold and black beaded cocktail dress, with makeup and false eyelashes.”

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