Biography of Angela Evelyn Bassett
Angela Evelyn Bassett (born August 16, 1958) is an American actress. Known for her work in film and television since the 1980s, she has received various accolades, including two Golden Globe Awards, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards and eight Primetime Emmy Awards. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2023, and she received an Academy Honorary Award in 2023.
Bassett was born in New York City. She attended Boca Ciega High School in Gulfport, Florida. Bassett was a cheerleader and a member of the Upward Bound college prep program, the debate team, student government, drama club and choir. During high school, Bassett became the first African-American from Boca Ciega to be admitted to the National Honor Society.
Bassett studied at Yale University and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in African American Studies in 1980. She then studied acting at the Yale School of Drama and obtained a Master of Fine Arts in 1983, despite opposition from her paternal aunt who warned her to not “waste” her “Yale education on theater.” She was the only member of Bassett’s family to have gone to both college and graduate school. At Yale, Bassett met her future husband Courtney B. Vance, a 1986 graduate of the drama school. Bassett was also classmates with actor Charles S. Dutton.
Bassett had her breakthrough portraying singer Tina Turner in the biopic What’s Love Got to Do with It (1993), which won her a Golden Globe Award and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She had success starring in Boyz n the Hood (1991), Malcolm X (1992), Waiting to Exhale (1995), Vampire in Brooklyn (1995), How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998), and Music of the Heart (1999). In the following decades, she took on supporting roles in the drama Notorious (2009), and the action films Green Lantern (2011), Olympus Has Fallen (2013), and London Has Fallen (2016). She also played Queen Ramonda in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films Black Panther (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022). For the latter, she won another Golden Globe and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
On television, Bassett has starred as Katherine Jackson in the miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream (1992). Her portrayal of Rosa Parks in the television film The Rosa Parks Story (2002) gained her a nomination for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress. Her performances in two seasons of the FX horror anthology series American Horror Story earned her nominations for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in 2014 and 2015. In 2018, Bassett began producing and starring as an LAPD patrol sergeant in the Fox drama series 9-1-1.
Bassett provided the voice of Dorothea Williams in the Pixar animated film Soul, which was released on Disney+ on December 25, 2020. She also became narrator of the Magic Kingdom nighttime spectacular Disney Enchantment that premiered on October 1, 2021.
In November 2022, she reprised her role as Ramonda in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Her performance in the sequel garnered her Best Supporting Actress awards at the 80th Golden Globe Awards—making her the first actor to win a major individual acting award for a film based on Marvel Comics—and at the 28th Critics’ Choice Awards. She was also nominated for an Academy Award in the same category, which made her the first person in a Marvel Studios movie to be nominated for an Academy Award in any acting category.
She is set to appear alongside Millie Bobby Brown in the Netflix film Damsel.
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