Bassett, Angela 1959(?)–

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Angela Bassett 1959(?)–

Actress

“It’s like Angela’s not there anymore,” actor Larry Fishburne told Entertainment Weekly, describing actress Angela Bassett’s capacity to inhabit a character. “She becomes who she’s playing.” At a time when women and African Americans in Hollywood struggle to find interesting, well-written roles, Bassett has emerged as a powerful, technically accomplished performer in such highly regarded films as Boyz N the Hood and Malcolm X; with her portrayal of rock survivor Tina Turner in the biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It, she became a star.

This may have surprised purveyors of conventional show business wisdom, but it certainly came as no shock to those who have worked with her. “Angela can do anything,” Fishburne insisted. “That’s the way it is. Whether or not anybody’s willing to accept that, that’s something else.” Producer Doug Chapin, part of the creative team that brought the Turner story to the screen, told Premiere, “Angela has really shaped a career like [versatile American actress] Meryl Streep’s. Money is a secondary question, celebrity is a secondary question—it’s all about wonderful work.”

Born in the late 1950s, Bassett grew up in public housing in St. Petersburg, Florida. She was first truly electrified by acting when, in 1974, she went on a field trip to Washington D.C. There she saw the illustrious black thespian James Earl Jones in a Kennedy Center production of the play Of Mice and Men. “I just sat there after the play, boo-hoo crying, weeping,” Bassett recalled to Barbara Jones of Premiere. “I couldn’t move, and I remember thinking, ‘My gosh, if I could make somebody feel the way I feel right now! “Upon her return home she immersed herself in plays and started “really concentrating.” A very good student, she was admitted to Yale, thanks in large part to the encouragement of her mother, Betty, who raised Angela and her sister D’Nette without the help of a spouse: “After [high school] graduation I knew I wanted to act,” the actress told Upscale magazine reporter Christie Smith. “I also wanted to play it safe, so I decided that I’d be a business woman. My mother suggested Yale. She even typed my application. Later, I changed my major to acting, and she supported me 100 percent.”

It wasn’t easy being a Floridian in the Ivy League. Bassett’s southern drawl set her apart from most of her East Coast classmates. She told Smith, “I had a lot of regionalism and really needed…training.” Fortunately, such training

At a Glance…

Born c. 1959; raised in St. Petersburg, FL, by mother, Betty. Education: Received master’s degree from Yale University, c. 1982.

Stage, film, and television actress, 1982—. Principal stage appearances include roles in August Wilson’s plays Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Joe Turner’s Come and Cone. Principal motion picture appearances include roles in Boyz N the Hood, 1991; City of Hope, 1991; Passion Fish, 1992; Malcolm X, 1992; and What’s Love Cot to Do With It, 1993. Television appearances include roles in The Guiding Light, Tour of Duty, and miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream, ABG-TV, 1992.

Selected awards: Golden Globe Award for best actress, 1994; two NAACP Image Awards, 1994.

Addresses: Agent —Ambrosio/Mortimer, 165 West 46th St., Suite 1214, New York, NY 10036.

came from a supportive teacher. Lloyd Richards was head of the Yale School of Drama and had seen Bassett acting in some undergraduate productions. He later told Premiere he’d seen in the aspiring actress a “deep passion” and declared, “When she applied for admittance to the drama school, I was very pleased.” Bassett spent a total of six years at Yale and earned a master’s degree.

Bassett began working in commercials soon after graduation; she had a role for a time on the television soap opera The Guiding Light and took parts in some forgettable films, like Critters 4. Yet much of her work has been, in the words of Entertainment Weekly’s Ty Burr, “high-minded indeed.” She made her Broadway debut in the August Wilson play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, was cast by Lloyd Richards in Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, and landed a role in director John Sayles’s 1991 urban epic City of Hope.

Stood Out in Boyz

But it was her performance in John Singleton’s highly successful 1991 film Boyz N the Hood —about a group of African American teens growing to manhood in the midst of urban violence—that gave Bassett some real attention. She played Reva, the sophisticated mother of the film’s young protagonist, Tre. Bassett’s recollections of her own mother’s dedication became a key to approaching the role of Reva, a woman who sends her son to live with his estranged father so that the youth might benefit from a strong male presence in his life. “When the role came up, I knew I wanted it,” the actress related to Upscale. “I mean, there’s a finite number of one-hour TV dramas you can do. I had been in L.A. for a while, and things weren’t up to speed. When I got it, I was appreciative and felt blessed. I identified with [characters like] Doughboy, Tre and the rest of them because when I grew up, the big thing was heroin; now it’s crack, guns and everything in between.”

Costar Larry Fishburne, a friend of Bassett’s, recommended her to the director, and she felt an immediate bond with the young filmmaker. “I remember looking at John Singleton, thinking how sincere he was,” she recalled. “He was only 21, making this massive film. I just had so much enthusiasm and love for what he was trying to do. After the audition, we sat around and talked to each other about great poets, like Langston Hughes. It seemed like we’d known each other before. I really just wanted to go over and hug him. He was just a baby.”

Made Her Mark in X

Bassett had a supporting role in Sayles’s well-regarded 1992 drama Passion Fish, but would garner much more attention that year for her portrayal of Betty Shabazz, the wife of Malcolm X, in Spike Lee’s film about the renowned activist’s life and tragic death at the hands of assassins. Her audition for the part astonished Lee, who told Premiere’s Jones that Bassett “was Betty. Betty Shabazz is the best work she’s ever done on film. She makes you feel for this woman.” In her interview with Upscale, Bassett noted: “Spike was surprisingly easy to work with. I mean we’ve all heard the rumors. He gave me a lot of room as an actress.” She added that Lee “really respects actors, but he doesn’t get credit for that. I found that I could really talk openly with him.”

Lee’s estimation of her work was confirmed by many viewers. “I watched as Angela Bassett reenacted Betty’s reaction to Malcolm’s assassination,” Joe Wood of Rolling Stone recounted. “Take 1, take 2, take 3, and she wailed, screamed, really, and in that screaming I felt tears.” Wood added that “Bassett’s voice carried an essential portion of Malcolm, of his spirit.” Reviewing the film for the same publication, critic Peter Travers referred to the actress as “the very fine but underused Angela Bassett.” Costar Denzel Washington, who played the film’s title role, told Burr of Entertainment Weekly that Bassett is “one of the very few actresses, period, of any color, who are carrying movies of substance.” The actress revealed in Upscale that she strove to “bring dignity to [the] performance.” In a Premiere piece, she allowed some insight into this process of characterization: “Betty was just so calm, so I was calm. You just got to be about your plan. Be about your race and finish it. Because there’re people who’re going to applaud it and people who won’t be impressed for one moment.”

Bassett took on the role of Katherine Jackson, mother of the famous musical clan that includes Michael, Janet, and LaToya, in the ABC-TV miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream, which aired in 1992. As the program’s producer Suzanne de Passe told Burr, “I watched Angela Bassett disappear into the role of Katherine Jackson.” De Passe added that merely seeing the actress run lines during rehearsal caused her to weep. “Usually,” the producer noted, “that doesn’t happen.” The drama begins when Katherine is 15 years old and ends when she’s 55. Bassett got some positive notices for her performance, though Entertainment Weekly complained that her character “is made to seem blandly noble and nothing more.”

The Challenge of Portraying Tina Turner

Bassett finally broke through to stardom in her first truly splashy screen role: playing Tina Turner in What’s Love Got to Do With It. Time’s Richard Zoglin called it “the kind of star-making turn that every actress dreams of—and practically every black actress in Hollywood wanted.” Bassett went into serious training for the role of the singer, whose tumultuous relationship with her husband, Ike—according to the film’s source, Turner’s autobiography /, Tina —included both emotional and physical abuse. “I had a dialect coach, a singing coach, a choreographer and a personal trainer for 30 days before the filming began,” Bassett told Deborah Gregory of Essence. “I lifted weights for two hours a day, six days a week, and went on a high-protein, no-sweets diet—egg whites, tuna without mayo, vegetables—to get Tina’s incredibly muscular physique. If I had had two months to prepare, I think I would’ve been able to enter a bodybuilding contest afterward.”

Larry Fishburne agreed to accept the role of Ike Turner only after he knew for sure that Bassett would play Tina. “She’s a bad motherf———er,” Fishburne exclaimed to Premiere. “Angie B. is all that and the Sunday papers. I sat down and thought, ‘I could just go and do this movie just’ cause Angie’s in it.’” He further commented to Burr of Entertainment Weekly that Bassett “is 100 percent committed” to the projects on which she works. The two actors managed to recreate the scenes of violence between Ike and Tina to a harrowing—and sometimes dangerously real—degree. Bassett suffered a broken hand during shooting and explained to Burr why she endured the physical strain of those scenes over repeated takes: “I’m the type of person who doesn’t want to kid it. I have to really go there, or I feel like I’m cheating. It’s painful to go there, but, hey, it’s painful not to go there.”

Best of all, Bassett had one other important figure for support during the making of the film: Turner herself. The singer flew in from Germany to see Bassett’s audition. “When I walked into the room,” Bassett recalled to Gregory of Essence, “she immediately hugged me and told her manager that she thought I was ‘beautiful,’ and then she started showing me some of the dance routines from her days with [musical group] the Ikettes.” Bassett added: “When I walked out of that room, I was flying on cloud nine and I knew I would give the part everything I had!” The actress told Burr that Turner “did my makeup. She was my biggest fan. Can you imagine?”

Bassett noted in Time that she considered the role of Tina Turner “the biggest challenge of my career.” She further described her hopes for the project in an Ebony interview: “I wanted to convey that [Tina] is a bright woman, a survivor and a fighter.” Apparently Bassett succeeded in her aim. Los Angeles film critic Rod Lurie predicted that she “is going to be a bigger star than Lady Tina herself.” Rolling Stone’s Travers, who had serious reservations about the film, nevertheless praised the actress’s “fine, sexy strutting portrayal of Tina,” calling her “a dazzler; she commendably resists playing Tina as a victim even when the script keeps pushing her down that familiar path.” Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly insisted that Bassett “captures the erotic youthquake that was Tina Turner in the ’60s and early ’70s.”

With her performance as Turner, Bassett entered the spotlight for good. Her combination of hard work, keen intelligence, and a willingness to become completely absorbed in her characters had earned her not merely respect but admiration from her peers; at long last, movie audiences were being let in on the secret. In the Upscale profile, the actress offered advice to those who hoped to follow her career path: “You have to have self-respect and that comes from within.… Be ready to go up against some hard forces. I mean directors and producers can discount you for strange reasons. ‘You look like my ex-girlfriend’ or ‘We’re gonna go with the actress with the body.’ It’s hard, but I’d do it all over again.”