Angela Bassett Biography And Net Worth

Who is Angela Basset?

Angela Evelyn Bassett is an American actress. Known for her work in film and television since the late 1980s, she has received various accolades, including two Golden Globe Awards, and sixteen NAACP Image Awards, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards and seven Primetime Emmy Awards. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2023. She will receive the Academy Honorary Award later in the year.

Bio Data

Biography

Angela Bassett was born on August 16, 1958, in New York City, to Betty Jane (née Gilbert), a social worker and civil servant, and Daniel Benjamin Bassett, a preacher’s son. Angela’s middle name was given to her in honour of her aunt Evelyn. Ten months after Angela was born, her mother became pregnant and had a second child, Angela’s sister D’nette. Angela said the pregnancy “only made things harder”, leading her parents to send her to her father’s sister, Golden, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. While her aunt did not have any children of her own, she “loved children, and she was good with them.”

At the age of four, Angela was picked up by her mother after her parents divorced and then relocated with her sister to St. Petersburg, Florida. Bassett did not see her father again for several years until she attended her grandmother’s funeral. There, Angela met her father’s daughter from his first marriage, Jean, who at twelve years old, was several years older than Bassett. After graduating from Jordan Park Elementary School, she began being bused out of her neighbourhood to attend Disston Middle School for seventh grade. The year she began attending was 1970, one year before the first year that busing was implemented to integrate public schools in St. Petersburg. After completing seventh grade, she was bused to Azalea Middle School for eighth and ninth grade. Angela’s mother became more involved in her daughter’s grades and told her and her sister the pair were going to college.

In her younger years, Angela was “in love” with the Jackson 5, and dreamed of marrying a member of the family group, stating it would probably be “whoever had the cutest, roundest Afro at the time. As her interest in entertainment developed, Angela and her sister would often put on shows, reading poems or performing popular music for their family.

At Boca Ciega High School, Bassett was a cheerleader and a member of the Upward Bound college prep program, the debate team, student government, drama club and choir. An “A” and “B” student for the most part, Bassett got her first “C” in physical education, and tried to convince her mother not to be disappointed by the grade. Bassett called the grade the “average,” leading her mother to say she did not have “average kids.” As Angela described, a “sense of pride” developed in her and she did not get another “C” until college. During high school, Bassett became the first African-American from Boca Ciega to be admitted to the National Honor Society. The Upward Bound program is an academic and cultural enrichment program for underprivileged students. Bassett says she and the other participants did not see themselves as underprivileged.

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 theatre.” 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.

After graduation, Bassett worked as a receptionist for a beauty salon and as a photo researcher. Bassett soon looked for acting work in the New York theatre. One of her first New York performances came in 1985 when she appeared in J. E. Franklin’s Black Girl at Second Stage Theatre. She appeared in two August Wilson plays at the Yale Repertory Theatre under the direction of her long-time instructor Lloyd Richards. The Wilson plays featuring Bassett were Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984), and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1986). In 2006, she had the opportunity to work on the Wilson canon again, starring in Fences alongside longtime collaborator Laurence Fishburne at the Pasadena Playhouse in California.

Career

In 1985, Angela Bassett made her first television appearance, as a prostitute in the made-for-TV movie Doubletake. She made her film debut as a news reporter in F/X (1986), for which she was required to join the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). Angela moved to Los Angeles in 1988 for more acting jobs, with early guest spots on A Man Called Hawk and 227 (both 1989).

Angela 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 a Golden Globe Award 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.

Angela has portrayed real-life African-American women who are usually strong and intelligent. Bassett said in 2001 that she liked those roles and added: “That’s the image that I like to put out there, and those are the parts I’m attracted to. But not iron-fist kind of strong, just self-assured. I’m nice too.” She has turned down roles which she viewed as demeaning to her image. “This is a career about images. It’s celluloid; they last forever. 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. And to cross the water, to countries where people will never meet people who look like me. So it becomes a bigger thing than me just becoming a movie star, and me just being on TV. So if you’re going to show every black woman as 400lb or every black woman as the prostitute on the street … But I have always maintained that [the roles] I cannot do because of the way I’m made up, or because of the way I think, I don’t begrudge that there is someone else who has no issues with that.”

Net Worth

Angela Bassett has a net worth of $30 million. That is a combined net worth with her husband of 25+ years, fellow actor Courtney B. Vance. Angela’s career has reached considerable heights since its beginning in the 1980s, and she has won many awards over the years while being nominated for plenty more.

Personal Life

Angela married actor Courtney B. Vance in 1997. They first met at Yale School of Drama, then became a couple over a decade later after their paths crossed again in Los Angeles. The couple’s twins – son Slater Josiah Vance and daughter Bronwyn Golden Vance – were carried by a surrogate.

Angela 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 and a member of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ. Angela is a supporter of the Royal Theater Boys & Girls Club in her hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida.

Angela is a Pentecostal Evangelical Christian and a member of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ (Church of God in Christ), located in Los Angeles.

FAQs

What role is Angela Bassett well known for?

Angela Bassett is known for portraying Black Women who made history, including Singer Tina Turner, Civil rights activists Rosa Parks and Betty Shabazz, the wife of African American Leader Malcolm X.

How old is Angela Bassett?

Angel Bassett is 65 years old. Born August 16, 1958.

Who is the most award-winning actress of all time?

Katharine Hepburn

More Articles on RNN

• Elijah Cummings Biography And Net Worth
• Hamish Harding’s Biography and Net Worth
• Yolanda Adams Biography And Net Worth
• Lakshmi Mittal’s Biography and Net Worth