Bassett, Angela (1958-…), is an American motion-picture, stage, and television actress. She has played a number of strong Black characters based on real women, including the American singer Tina Turner. Bassett was nominated for Academy Awards for playing Turner in the film What’s Love Got to Do with It (1993) and for her performance in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022). She won Golden Globe Awards for both roles. Bassett was the recipient of a 2023 honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement and contributions to the movie industry. 
Angela Evelyn Bassett was born on Aug. 16, 1958, in New York City. She grew up in public housing in St. Petersburg, Florida, where she was raised by a single mother. On a high school trip to Washington, D.C., Bassett was inspired by a production of the play Of Mice and Men. She won a scholarship to attend Yale University, where she earned a B.A. in African American studies in 1980, and an M.F.A. in drama in 1983. At Yale, Bassett studied under the American director Lloyd Richards, the first Black man to direct a play on Broadway. In 1987, she married the American actor Courtney B. Vance, a fellow drama student from Yale.
Bassett began acting professionally in the early 1980’s. She appeared in the play Beef, No Chicken at the Yale Repertory Theatre during its 1981-1982 season. Bassett made her Broadway debut in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in 1985. She later appeared on Broadway in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, in 1988, and The Mountaintop, from 2011 to 2012. Bassett’s other stage credits include performances in King Henry IV, Part I, in 1987; in Macbeth, in 1998; and in Fences, in 2006.
Bassett has acted in many television series and miniseries since the 1980’s. Her early TV appearances included roles on the series “The Cosby Show,” “Search for Tomorrow,” and “Spencer: For Hire” in 1985. She played Katherine Jackson, the mother of Michael Jackson, in the miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream (1992). In the early decades of the 2000’s, Bassett has had notable roles on the series “ER,” “American Horror Story,” and “9-1-1.”
Bassett made her motion-picture debut in F/X (1986). Her other movies from the late 1900’s include Boyz n the Hood (1991), Malcolm X (1992), Waiting to Exhale (1995), Strange Days (1995), Contact (1997), How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998), and Music of the Heart (1999). Her movies from the early 2000’s include The Score (2001), The Rosa Parks Story (2002), Akeelah and the Bee (2006), Notorious (2009), Jumping the Broom (2011), Betty and Coretta (2013), Olympus Has Fallen (2013), Chi-Raq (2015), London Has Fallen (2016), and Black Panther (2018). Bassett’s roles have included the American civil rights figures Coretta Scott King and Rosa Parks; Betty Shabazz, the wife of Malcolm X; and Violetta Wallace, the mother of The Notorious B.I.G.
