Angela Bassett (𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 August 16, 1958, New York, New York, U.S.) is an American actress best known for portraying Black women who made history, including singer Tina Turner and civil rights activists Rosa Parks and Betty Shabazz, the wife of African American leader Malcolm X.
Bassett was 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 in New York, New York, and raised by an aunt in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. When Bassett was about five, she and her sister moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, to live with their mother, who had separated from their father. While in high school Bassett saw John Steinbeck’s play Of Mice and Men, starring James Earl Jones, and decided that she wanted to become an actor. She attended Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, receiving a bachelor’s degree (1980) in African American studies and a master’s degree (1983) from the Yale School of Drama. While at Yale she met Courtney B. Vance, a fellow actor, and the two married in 1997.
Bassett’s career began onstage in the mid-1980s. Her notable performances include parts in August Wilson’s plays Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which was her Broadway debut, and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone at the Yale Repertory Theatre. About the same time she had several small roles on television, including on series such as Spenser: For Hire, The Cosby Show, and A Man Called Hawk. In 1986 she made her movie debut as a reporter in the action thriller F/X. She later played a flight attendant in the action comedy Kindergarten Cop (1990).
In 1991 Bassett played a small but powerful role as a single mother trying to keep her son out of a gang in director John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood. It was the first of several movies she appeared in alongside Laurence Fishburne. In 1992 she performed in her biggest role yet, starring opposite Denzel Washington in director Spike Lee’s Malcolm X. That same year she appeared as singer Michael Jackson’s mother, Katherine, in the TV miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream. Bassett’s portrayal of singer Tina Turner in What’s Love Got to Do with It (1993) received critical and popular praise, and she was nominated for an Academy Award for best actress and won a Golden Globe for best actress in a motion picture musical or comedy. Movies such as the highly acclaimed romantic dramedies Waiting to Exhale (1995) and How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998), both adapted from Terry McMillan books, showcased Bassett’s versatility.
Akeelah and the Bee
Actresses KeKe Palmer (left) and Angela Bassett in Akeelah and the Bee (2006), directed by Doug Atchison.
Bassett’s work from the early 21st century includes the crime drama The Score (2001), with Robert De Niro, and the TV movie The Rosa Parks Story (2002), in which she played the title character. After having a recurring role on the TV series Alias in 2005, Bassett starred in the family drama Akeelah and the Bee (2006), portraying the mother of a girl attempting to become a national spelling champion. In the biography Notorious (2009) Bassett played the mother of Christopher Wallace, the rapper better known by the stage name the Notorious B.I.G. In 2008–09 she had a recurring role on the popular medical drama series ER. She occasionally took on stage roles, including a 2005 production of His Girl Friday with Vance and a 2006 performance of the Wilson play Fences.
Bassett’s later work was just as varied. On the big screen she appeared in the dramedy Jumping the Broom (2011) and the romantic action comedy This Means War (2012) before playing the director of the U.S. Secret Service in the action thriller Olympus Has Fallen (2013) and its sequel London Has Fallen (2016). Her other films include Lee’s crime dramedy Chi-Raq (2015) and the action adventure Mission: Impossible—Fallout (2018). Bassett also played the mother of the character T’Challa (the Black Panther) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s action adventures Black Panther (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022). For the latter she won a Golden Globe for best performance by an actress in a supporting role in any motion picture and received her second Oscar nomination.
Angela Bassett
Angela Bassett in the television series 9-1-1.
Meanwhile, from 2013 to 2018 Bassett appeared on the television series American Horror Story, and she added another popular television role in 2018 when she began playing a Los Angeles police officer in 9-1-1. She also served as an executive producer on that show and, beginning in 2020, on its spin-off, 9-1-1: Lone Star. Over her career Bassett lent her voice to many animated movies, including Meet the Robinsons (2007), Curious George 3: Back to the Jungle (2015), and Soul (2020). Bassett and Vance wrote, with Hilary Beard, the memoir Friends: A Love Story (2007).
