'Sinners' Star Delroy Lindo's Most Forgotten Performance Is This 32-Year-Old Spike Lee Gem

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Delroy Lindo sitting on the stairs with his daughter in 'Crooklyn'

Published Mar 11, 2026, 9:32 AM EDT

Thomas Butt is a senior writer. An avid film connoisseur, Thomas actively logs his film consumption on Letterboxd and vows to connect with many more cinephiles through the platform. He is immensely passionate about the work of Martin Scorsese, John Ford, and Albert Brooks. His work can be read on Collider and Taste of Cinema. He also writes for his own blog, The Empty Theater, on Substack. He is also a big fan of courtroom dramas and DVD commentary tracks. For Thomas, movie theaters are a second home. A native of Wakefield, MA, he is often found scrolling through the scheduled programming on Turner Classic Movies and making more room for his physical media collection. Thomas habitually increases his watchlist and jumps down a YouTube rabbit hole of archived interviews with directors and actors. He is inspired to write about film to uphold the medium's artistic value and to express his undying love for the art form. Thomas looks to cinema as an outlet to better understand the world, human emotions, and himself.

For Delroy Lindo, an Academy Award nomination was long overdue. An actor who has never been anything short of excellent for over 30 years in movies, Lindo finally received his proper due last month when he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his soulful performance in Sinners, which was one of its record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations. His versatility and emotional range made him the ideal character actor, but he was also blessed with the impeccable screen presence of a certified leading man. If you ever wanted to experience the full scope of the Lindo experience, look no further than a Spike Lee joint deserving of more fanfare. In Crooklyn, Lee reflects on his upbringing in Brooklyn in this semi-autobiographical coming-of-age dramedy. To play a dramatized portrait of his tough but loving father, the director called upon Lindo, a frequent collaborator of his, to deliver a sweeping performance.

Spike Lee Reflects on His Youth in 'Crooklyn'

No star has been a more reliable and sturdy presence in Spike Lee's filmography than Delroy Lindo, who has given varied but superb performances in Malcolm X, Clockers, and Da 5 Bloods. With the latter of the three, in which Lindo is transcendent as a traumatized Vietnam veteran grappling with self-loathing and redemption while looking for buried treasure, he was inexcusably ignored for an Oscar nod. The actor, renowned for conveying commanding authority on the screen, is a perfect vessel for Lee to modulate, as he deploys his gravitas to explore humanity's innate love-hate dichotomy and proud Black empowerment present in all his films.

Lindo carried the heavy burden of playing Woody Carmichael, an avatar for Lee's father in Crooklyn, a 1994 reflection of the director's childhood during one summer in Bedford-Stuyvesant in 1973. Spike wrote the film alongside his real-life siblings, Joie and Cinqué Lee, who were raised by a father in the artistic world himself, jazz musician Bill Lee, who scored his son's early films. Woody presents himself as a stereotypical stern, no-nonsense father who demands the utmost respect from his children at all times. However, the Carmichael kids' fear of their father's parenting is nothing compared to Woody's internal conflict between supporting his family and his solo music career, which leads to heated fights between him and his wife, Carolyn (Alfre Woodard).

Delroy Lindo Plays a Career-Focused Father With an Internal Conflict in 'Crooklyn'

Lindo's tremendous work in Crooklyn is a mirror to his stirring work in Ryan Coogler's vampire-hunting horror-thriller/music drama, where he played Delta Slim, a music legend who carries the harsh realities of Black art versus the interference of outside forces looking to control creative autonomy. The patriarch of the Carmichael family in Lee's film longs for an idyllic life where art, commerce, and familial support all work in unison. For low-income families living in Brooklyn in the 1970s, only one pathway was possible. Amid all the turbulence in the Carmichael home and the vast array of oddball characters on the streets of Bed-Stuy is a reserved, lonely performance by Lindo, who must redeem himself as a father and husband for his misallocation of his family's savings on his career.

Despite his misgivings, Woody is the aching heart of Crooklyn, a film about learning to love the detestable things and judge the aspects you're supposed to cherish, including family members and traditions. As with all his New York-based movies, Lee has so much affection for this milieu, even when the stifling heat and claustrophobia make it seem like hell on earth. Every corner, car, and graffiti work feels like it was pulled from memory, and the film's robust soundtrack of '70s soul tunes speaks to Lee's entire childhood. Lee's favoritism of Brooklyn becomes all too evident when the family takes a trip to the South, where he uses an anamorphic lens to create a compressed, disorienting image on-screen, so much so that audiences in 1994 believed there was a technical error on the print or the projector. The personality and expression of love, beauty, and art molded Lee into the filmmaker and celebrity personality that he is today.

The character Lee seemingly relates to the most is not the stand-in for his younger self, but rather, his flawed and often-absent father. By the decade's end, Lee would start a family, a mammoth responsibility tacked on to his already prolific career as a director of narrative films, documentaries, commercials, as well as being the face of New York Knicks fandom. The equal passion for raising a family and pursuing artistic excellence is imbued with so much sympathy that you can't knock Woody either way. Most of all, Delroy Lindo's performance, marked by his reticence at home and sensitive expression in his music, is monumental. For Lindo, however, this portrayal of internal conflict was effortlessly conveyed.

Crooklyn is available to rent or buy on VOD services in the U.S.