Background

Ethnicity: A DNA test taken by the show Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (2014) stated that Angela’s genetic ancestry is: 78% African, 21% European, 0.6% Native American. The DNA test stated that much of Angela’s African DNA was from Nigeria, with small parts from Benin and Togo, Cameroon and Congo, Mali, southeastern Bantu (Angola), Ivory Coast and Ghana, Senegal, and the South Central hunter-gatherers. Much of her European DNA was from Great Britain.

Angela Evelyn Bassett was born on August 16, 1958, in New York City, New York, the United States, to Betty Jane and Daniel Benjamin Bassett. Her father was an electrician and her mother worked as a nurse's aide. Bassett's middle name was given to her in honor of her aunt Evelyn.

After her mother got pregnant again when she was only 10 months old, her parents sent her to Winston-Salem to live with her father's sister, Aunt Golden. Her parents separated soon after, and her mother took her and her younger sister, D'nette, to St. Petersburg, Florida, to live with her grandparents.

Education

Bassett's mother, who slacked off in high school, didn't want her children to suffer the same fate and was extra cautious that they do well in school. Angela attended Boca Ciega High School, where she became a member of the Upward Bound program and where she was the first African-American student accepted in her high school's National Honor Society. She also participated in the debate team, student government, drama club, and choir. Encouraged by a teacher, Bassett went on to study at Yale on a scholarship.

She received her bachelor's degree in African-American studies from Yale University in 1980. Three years later, she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in drama from the Yale School of Drama. While there, she studied under the renowned stage director Lloyd Richards, who cast her in the Broadway productions of two August Wilson plays: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and Joe Turner's Come and Gone.

Career

Despite her early success on stage, Bassett had to work hard to break through the stereotypical roles usually assigned to African-American women on screen. Her first role was a bit part in the cult favorite, F/X (1986). In 1991, she had a key role in John Singleton's seminal anti-gang film, Boyz 'N the Hood. A year later, she landed the role of Katherine Jackson, mother of the Jackson Five singing group, in The Jacksons: An American Dream (1992). Bassett continued taking on strong female roles by portraying Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X, in Spike Lee's Malcolm X (1992), starring Denzel Washington in the title role. She turned in an outstanding performance in her breakthrough role as Tina Turner in What's Love Got To Do With It? (1993), earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

Bassett co-starred with Whitney Houston in the adaptation of Terry McMillan's Waiting To Exhale in 1995. In 1998 she headlined another McMillan adaptation, How Stella Got Her Groove Back. In Jodie Foster's extraterrestrial-encounter film, Contact (1997), Bassett portrayed a top-level presidential advisor. Back on stage, Bassett played Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare's Hamlet, costarring Alec Baldwin, at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York City in 1998.

A versatile performer, Bassett has continued to tackle a diverse mix of projects. She shared the stage with her husband Courtney B. Vance in a regional production of His Girl Friday in 2005. The pair also appeared together in the final season of the hit television drama ER from 2008 to 2009.

On the big screen, Bassett starred in 2006's Akeelah and the Bee with Keke Palmer and Laurence Fishburne. She played the mother of an inner-city spelling whiz who tries for a national championship. Bassett went on to play the mother of slain rapper Christopher "Biggie" Wallace in 2009's biopic Notorious. In 2011, she appeared in several films, including the wedding comedy Jump the Broom and the comic book adaptation of Green Lantern.

Bassett returned to Broadway in The Mountaintop, co-starring Samuel L. Jackson. She played a maid who spends time with civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. before his assassination. On the small screen, she played King's widow, Coretta Scott King, in the 2013 television movie Betty & Coretta, which co-starred Mary J. Blige as Betty Shabazz. That same year she starred as Secret Service director Lynn Jacobs in Olympus Has Fallen and in a film version of Langston’s Hughes’ Black Nativity, which also starred Forest Whitaker and Jennifer Hudson.

Since then, Bassett has gone on to star in several TV shows and movies, including stints on American Horror Story, playing Marian Laveau, the "Voodoo Queen of New Orleans" in the third season, Coven, which earned her two Emmy nominations. Bassett received another Emmy nomination for playing Desiree Dupree, a three-breasted lady, in the show's fourth season, American Horror Story: Freak Show. She returned for the show's fifth season, Hotel, playing movie star Ramona Royale, and Monet Tumusiime, an alcoholic actress, in the sixth season, Roanoke.

In March 2017, Bassett appeared in "Ache", an episode of the television series Underground. In May 2017, Bassett appeared in an episode of Master of None, portraying major character Denise's mother Catherine.

In January 2018, Bassett starred in the Fox first responder procedural drama 9-1-1, of which she is also a producer. In February 2018, Bassett starred in the acclaimed Marvel superhero film Black Panther, as Dowager Queen Ramonda, mother of the titular character. In December 2018, she voiced the Decepticon villain 'Shatter' from the Transformers live-action film Bumblebee.

In 2019, she joined the cast of Gunpowder Milkshake. She also reprised her role as Ramonda in Avengers Endgame.

Achievements

• 

  For her portrayal of Tina Turner in the biopic What's Love Got to Do with It, Angela Bassett was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She has received a bunch of awards for this role, including the Golden Globe Award' for 'Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.
  
  She has received three Primetime Emmy Awards nominations so far, with two back-to-back nominations in 2014-2015 for her role in the television series American Horror Story. She also received two Screen Actors Guild Awards nominations for Ruby's Bucket of Blood and Betty and Coretta.
  
  Bassett received a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7000 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on March 20, 2008.
  
  In 2018, Basset was awarded an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from her alma mater, Yale University. She was also awarded an honorary doctorate from Morehouse College in Atlanta in May 2019.
  
  Angela is one of the only 10 African-American actresses to be nominated for an Oscar in the Best Actress category since its inception in 1929. She was nominated for her role in What’s Love Got to Do with it in 1994.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • The Score

    (When safecracker Nick (Robert De Niro) decides it's time ...)

    2001
  • Music of the Heart

    (Two-time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep (It's Complica...)

    1999
  • Notorious

    (Notorious is the story of Christopher Wallace who, throug...)

    2009
  • Gospel Hill

    (Decades after the murder of a local civil rights activist...)

    2008
  • Boyz n' The Hood

    (Three friends struggle to survive in South Central Los An...)

    1991
  • F/X

    (Rollie Tyler, a movie special-effects man, accepts $30, 0...)

    1986
  • Olympus Has Fallen

    (A terrorist mastermind kidnaps the President of the Unite...)

    2013
  • Black Panther

    (When young King T'Challa is drawn into conflict with an o...)

    2018
  • Boesman and Lena

    (Boesman & Lena examines the progress of a couple's life t...)

    2000
  • Jumping The Broom

    (When a marriage brings together the bride's upper-crust r...)

    2011
  • London Has Fallen

    (The President of the United States (Aaron Eckhart) and hi...)

    2016
  • Kindergarten Cop

    (A macho cop, adept at dealing with crooks on the street, ...)

    1990
  • Green Lantern

    (Protectors of peace and justice, the Green Lantern Corp m...)

  • Contact

    (Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey star in this grippin...)

    1997
  • Challenger

    (As the world excitedly awaited what should have been a ro...)

    1990
  • Curious George 3: Back to the Jungle

    (Curious George goes on an epic adventure to space that cr...)

    2015
  • CHI-RAQ

    (Directed by the critically acclaimed filmmaker Spike Lee,...)

    2015
  • Sunshine State

    (Two women return to their hometown roots in coastal north...)

    2002
  • Innocent Blood

    (A modern-day vampire tale about a beautiful vampire who o...)

    1992
  • Critters 4

    (After being cryogenically frozen and waking up on a space...)

    1991
  • What's Love Got To Do With It?

    (Story of Tina Turner, whose incredible voice and indomita...)

    1993
  • Vampire in Brooklyn

    (As the vampire Maximillian (Eddie Murphy), the popular st...)

    1995
  • How Stella Got Her Groove Back

    (t's passion in paradise when a high-powered stockbroker a...)

    1998
  • Mission: Impossible - Fallout

    (Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) chooses to save his team over com...)

    2018
  • Black Nativity

    (Based on the Langston Hughes's play, this beloved seasona...)

    2014
  • Meet the Robinsons

    (Lewis is a brilliant inventor who meets a mysterious stra...)

    2007
  • Malcolm X

    (Filmmaker Spike Lee, star Denzel Washington and other tal...)

    1992
  • Masked And Anonymous

    (Bob Dylan is Jack Fate, a singer coerced into making a co...)

    2003
  • Survivor

    (After decades of drifting in space, the last living human...)

    2015
  • City Of Hope

    (City of Hope is a portrait of a typical middle-sized Amer...)

    1991
  • White Bird in a Blizzard

    (Kat Connors' (Shailene Woodley) glamorous but strange mot...)

    2014
  • Akeelah and the Bee

    (A young girl from South Los Angeles tries to make it to t...)

    2006
  • Supernova

    ("Supernova" chronicles the adventures of a deep-space hos...)

    2000
  • This Means War

    (FDR (Chris Pine) and Tuck (Tom Hardy) are covert CIA oper...)

    2012
  • Whispers: An Elephant's Tale

    (A baby elephant named Whispers finds himself separated fr...)

    2000
  • Mr. 3000

    (Years of retirement a man discovers a chance - in sports,...)

    2004
  • Other Side of Love

    (A single mother meets a man who gives her some cash to ho...)

    1991
  • Strange Days

    (It's the eve of the millennium in Los Angeles, December 3...)

    1995
  • Passion Fish

    (When tragedy strikes, two unlikely women forge a life-lon...)

    1992
  • Waiting to Exhale

    (Four women, all friends, are waiting...meet Savannah, Ber...)

    1995
  • Nothing But The Truth

    (Inspired by true events. A Washington, D.C. reporter writ...)

    2008

• TV series

  • Close to the Enemy

    (Intelligence officer Callum Ferguson (Sturgess) must comp...)

    2016
  • American Horror Story: Freak Show

    (American Horror Story: Freak Show is the story of the per...)

    2014
  • American Horror Story: Coven

    (After 300 years of witches living in secrecy, new attacks...)

    2013
  • 9-1-1

    (A new drama exploring the high-pressure experiences of po...)

    2018
  • American Horror Story: Hotel

    (The 13-episode fifth installment of the Emmy® and Golden ...)

  • American Horror Story: Roanoke

    (American Horror Story is an anthology horror drama series...)

    2016

Religion

Bassett, whose grandfather was a pastor, grew up in Sunday school and her church choir. She often went to Bible study with her grandmother. She said in Parade, "Love of God makes so much sense to me when other things don't. Life is so beautiful and complex, that it doesn't make sense to me that it was just an explosion. It's my belief system."

A strong Christian faith has helped Angela Bassett stay grounded after three decades in Hollywood. She told the Christian Post fame and money are nice, but "not if you serve them" and they "have the potential to devour."

Bassett told Parade she prays for strength. "I follow my dreams, but to not crave it so much that I'm easily preyed upon…All money is not good money and some of these situations can rob you of your good intentions. Knowing who you are and staying true to that is everything."

Politics

In early 2007, Bassett donated $2,300 to the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. Bassett supported Obama in his reelection campaign. In June 2012, she made an appearance at the St. Petersburg office of his campaign and said the election was not one "where we can sit on the sidelines." Bassett attended the second inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20, 2013. She endorsed Hillary Clinton for president during the 2016 United States presidential election, saying "Bar none, Clinton would make a great president." Bassett also spoke at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, introducing survivors of the previous year's Charleston church shooting, an incident about which she spoke during her remarks. After Clinton was defeated in the general election, Bassett tweeted, "Only 1455 days until November 3, 2020. Rest up my country. #ProudOfHer."

Views

Bassett is a supporter of programs for the arts, especially for youth. She annually attends events for children with diabetes and those in foster homes. She is an active Ambassador of UNICEF for the United States. Bassett is a supporter of the Royal Theater Boys & Girls Club in her hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida.

Quotations: "I like the nice guys. I like when they show the stories, the human element behind it all."

"I can give you the King's English and then I can take it to the street, but do both or do one and don't do one knowing only the street. That's going to hold you back because what comes out is going to impress people, and it will impress them negatively."

"This is a career about images. It's celluloid; they last for ever. I'm a black woman from America. My people were slaves in America, and even though we're free on paper and in law, I'm not going to allow you to enslave me on film, in celluloid, for all to see."

"The three things I said when I came out of school were I want to work consistently, I want to do good work and I want to be paid fairly, and that's happened. But I didn't become an actress for the money. I do it for other reasons."

Membership

Bassett was initiated as an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority on July 13, 2013.

• Honorary member

  Delta Sigma Theta

  July 13, 2013 - present

Personality

Angela received her middle name from her aunt Evelyn. Furthermore, her surname originates from her paternal great-grandfather William Henry Bassett. Apparently, he took the name from his former oppressor whose children later became the founders of the place called Bassett in Virginia.

Angela discovered her passion for acting at the age of 16 when her 11th-grade class trip visited Washington D.C in 1974. She watched actor James Earl Jones perform in a Kennedy Center production of the play Of Mice and Men and was so impressed that she decided to make acting her career of choice.

Angela has admitted to being a huge fan of The Jackson 5 during her formative years. She further added that she dreamt of marrying the member with the ‘cutest and roundest Afro’ from the musical family group. It was at this time that her interest in entertainment was developing as she and her sister would regularly put on shows performing popular songs and reading poetry for the family.

Quotes from others about the person

• “It’s like Angela’s not there anymore. She becomes who she’s playing.” - Lawrence Fishburne
  
  "Bassett is one of the very few actresses, period, of any color, who are carrying movies of substance.” - Denzel Washington

Interests

• cooking

• Politicians

  Barack Obama

• Writers

  Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes

• Artists

  Chelle Barbour, Victoria Beckham, Giuseppe Zanotti, Jimmy Choo, Givenchy, Proenza Schouler

• Sport & Clubs

  basketball

• Music & Bands

  The Jackson 5, Aretha Franklin

Connections

Bassett married actor Courtney B. Vance in 1997. In the summer of 2005, they starred together in a production of His Girl Friday at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The couple's twins - son Slater Josiah Vance and daughter Bronwyn Golden Vance - carried by a surrogate, were born on January 27, 2006.

Father:

Daniel Benjamin Bassett

Mother:

Betty Jane Bassett

Spouse:

Courtney B. Vance

colleague:

Laurence Fishburne III

colleague:

Emma Roberts

colleague:

Evan Peters

Sister:

D'nette Bassett

Son:

Slater Josiah Vance

Daughter:

Bronwyn Golden Vance

colleague:

Danny Glover

colleague:

Keke Palmer

colleague:

Chris Pine

colleague:

Peter Sarsgaard

colleague:

Gerard Butler

colleague:

Shailene Woodley

colleague:

Chadwick Boseman

colleague:

Lupita Nyong'o

colleague:

Henry Cavill

colleague:

Sebastian Stan

colleague:

Alec Baldwin

colleague:

Felicity Huffman

References

• Angela Bassett