Stage, television, and film actor Earle Hyman was lifelong friends with Geoffrey Holder and Holder's widow, Carmen Lavallade. Hyman appeared in the 1959 West End production of A Raisin In the Sun alongside Kim Hamilton; various television and film roles, including adaptions of Macbeth (1968), Julius Caesar (1979), and Coriolanus (1979), and voiced Panthro on the animated television series ThunderCats (1985-1989); The Cosby Show, earned him an Emmy Award nomination in 1986. He played Russell Huxtable, the father of the lead character Cliff Huxtable.
