Getting to Know: Angela Bassett

With over 100 credits to her name in a career than almost spans four decades, it's about time Cinema Paradiso got to know Angela Bassett a little better.

According to Master of None (2015-17) star Lena Waithe, 'Angela Bassett is a freaking legend. Without Angela Bassett, there is no Viola Davis. Without Angela Bassett, there is no Halle Berry. She's the one who came in and did things Meryl Streep was doing, as a Black actress.' In her own estimation, she's had 'a pretty consistent decade-after-decade-after-decade career'.

Angela Bassett is known in Hollywood to committing fully to everything she does. 'I just find great opportunities all around,' she said in one interview. 'It may be animation. It may be a commercial. It may be a weekly one-hour drama ensemble, or it may be Queen Ramonda. So each one is important. And each one…demands, asks your devotion to it. So, I take it all seriously.' This attitude challenges everyone who works with her, as she sets standards that drive cast and crew members to be their best. But Bassett expects even more of herself.

'I've always said,' she once revealed, 'I want to be a working actor, I want to be paid fairly, and I want to do work that inspires me.' She went on: 'As an actor, I say yes to something, I buy into whatever dream that is, if I think it's something that will help me grow and it's an idea I would love to get out in the marketplace, in the world, in the ears, in the heart, in the eyes of audiences. So, whichever way the mop flops in terms of if it's successful or not, I glean something from it as a human being.' This determination to learn and improve has ensured that Bassett keeps excelling and being discovered by new audiences all the time.

Hairbrush Karaoke

Angela Evelyn Bassett was born in New York on 16 August 1958. Sister D'nette arrived just 10 months later, but life was a struggle for parents Daniel and Betty Jane and the girls were billeted with their father's sister, Golden, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. When Angela was four, however, Betty Jane filed for divorce and moved the family to a housing project in St Petersburg, Florida. She didn't see Daniel again until her grandmother's funeral, when she met 12 year-old stepsister Jean for the first time.

Often left with neighbours while Betty Jane worked for the local juvenile welfare board by day and cleaned offices by night, Bassett has nothing but admiration for her mother. 'If she was too tired,' she remembered, 'she'd drop off my sister and me and we'd clean them. Or, if she was cleaning, she'd drop us off at the library till it closed, or she'd drop us off at the roller rink to babysit us till she got back. But she always liked to do things excellently. She wasn't one to throw something together.' Indeed, Betty Jane's determination that her daughters wouldn't find themselves in her situation prompted her to push them hard at school. When Angela got a C grade for physical education, she tried to shrug it off. But Betty Jane insisted, 'I don't have any average children.'

As segregation was still an issue in schools when Bassett was young, she had to be bussed to Azalea Middle School so she could attend an integrated facility. She proved a bright student and, while at Boca Ciega High, she was a member of the debating team and the drama club, as well as being a cheerleader. In addition to being part of the school choir, Bassett also used to hold her hairbrush like a microphone to sing the latest hits with her sister. Her heroes were The Jackson 5 and she dreamed of marrying one of the brothers and settling down. Not that she had a favourite, as she liked 'whoever had the cutest, roundest Afro at the time'.

Bassett was also part of the Upward Bound college prep programme and her life changed during a trip to the Kennedy Centre in Washington, DC to see James Earl Jones in a stage adaptation of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men (which has been filmed in 1939 and 1982 and is available to rent from Cinema Paradiso). As she later reminisced: 'I'm the last one in the theatre, you know, as they're cleaning up and I'm sitting there bawling my eyes out because I so believe that he had been shot. I thought, "Oh, my gosh, if I could, I could make people feel the way I feel right now, which is to' up from the flo' up."' In another interview she joked, 'I thought, "How great would it be if I could make someone else feel that awful?"'

Suddenly infatuated with performing, Bassett threw herself into the monthly services at the local church that gave kids a chance to express themselves. In one short play, she borrowed a dress from her great-grandmother and aged herself by etching wrinkles with eye-liner and putting baby powder in her hair. Having heard an album of Ruby Dee reading the poetry of Langston Hughes, Bassett also started acting out verses in private. But it was the thunderous ovation she received for a recitation of Hughes's 'Final Call' at a church talent contest that convinced the 15 year-old that she might have found her calling.

One of her earliest acting experiences came at the St Petersburg Little Theatre, when she took a leading role in a 1976 production of The Great Sebastians, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse's comedy about a bickering showbiz couple on tour. Yet Bassett was still considering a career in molecular biophysics and biochemistry when she applied to college. She won a place at Yale, where she soon dropped Business Studies because she was having trouble with the statistics side of the course. Instead, she majored in African American Studies under Henry Louis Gates, Jr. before doing a Master of Fine Arts at the Yale School of Drama.

Among her classmates were Charles S. Dutton and future husband, Courtney B. Vance. Her aunt was concerned, however, that Bassett was frittering the chances her education had afforded her. 'I watch television,' she cautioned. 'There's nobody that looks like you on TV on a regular basis. And eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner is regular. Shelter is regular.' Betty Jane was more encouraging. 'I don't care what you do,' she reasoned. 'No matter what! Just learn something. It'll be all right. You just wake up and open your ears, you're going to learn something.' This was the advice on which Bassett would build her entire career.

The Biopic Queen

On graduating, Bassett went to New York and took a job as a receptionist at a beauty salon. As her lunchbreaks weren't long enough to allow her to attend auditions, she became a picture researcher at US News & World Report, who gave her more latitude. In addition to an understudy spot on a touring production of Colored People's Time, she also appeared in a Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial. Lloyd Richards invited her to star in two August Wilson plays at the Yale Repertory Theatre, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984) and Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1986). In between, she featured in J.E. Franklin's Black Girl at the Second Stage Theatre in New York.

Deciding to try her luck on the West Coast, Bassett played nurse Salina McCulla in five episodes of the long-running soap opera, Search For Tomorrow (1951-86). Bits followed in shows as different as The Cosby Show (1984-92), Tour of Duty (1987-90), Thirtysomething (1987-91), and The Flash (1990-91), while she was also cast as a prostitute named Porsha in the mini-series, Doubletake (1985). Having initially reckoned on staying for six months, Bassett began to find regular work and she joined the Screen Actors Guild in order to make her feature bow as a TV reporter in Robert Mandel's F/X: Murder By Illusion (1986).

Settling in Los Angeles in 1988, Bassett seemed set to star with Cicely Tyson and Laurence Fishburne in Irwin Winkler's adaptation of Sherley Anne Williams's bestseller, Dessa Rose, when the funding collapsed. Instead, she cropped up as a stewardess in Ivan Reitman's Arnold Schwarzenegger comedy, Kindergarten Cop and played Cheryl McNair, the widow of space shuttle astronaut Ronald McNair (Joe Morton), in Glenn Jordan's teleplay, Challenger (both 1990). Staying on the small screen, Bassett essayed Willie, an inmate who befriends Annie Gallagher (Cheryl Ladd) after she is wrongfully jailed for drug trafficking in Bethany Rooney's The Other Side of Love (aka Locked Up: A Mother's Rage, 1991).

Elsewhere, John Sayles chose her for two dramas that really should be on disc in this country, City of Hope (1991) and Passion Fish (1992). And Bassett later joked that she realised she was finally being taken seriously when her character, spaceship pilot Fran, survived Rupert Harvey's comic horror, Critters 4 (1992).

In truth, she had already been acclaimed for her performance as Reva Devereaux in Boyz N the Hood (1991), which saw the debuting John Singleton become the first African American to be nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards and the youngest ever nominee in the category. As the mother concerned that her son needs his father's influence, Bassett got to deliver the stinging rebuke to Laurence Fishburne as ex-husband, Furious Styles: 'Don't think you're special. You may be cute, but you're not special.'

This was one of the key films in the New Black Cinema wave that had started with Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It (1986) and Do the Right Thing (1989). He asked Bassett to play Betty Shabazz opposite Denzel Washington in Malcolm X (1992). The nurse Malcolm marries in 1958 bears him four daughters and helps him decide his future with the Nation of Islam after learning about the hypocricies in leader Elijah Muhammad's private life. Having won Best Supporting Actress at the Image Awards sponsored by the National Association For the Advancement of Colored People, Bassett feared she might never get an equally rewarding role. 'I think I have been incredibly blessed,' she said, 'and it is probably just all downhill from here.'

Playing US Attorney Barbara Sinclair in John Landis's dark vampire comedy, Innocent Blood (1992), might not have seemed like a positive step. But Bassett was thrilled to be cast at Michael Jackson's insistence as his mother, Katherine, in the mini-series, The Jacksons: An American Dream, which aired on the ABC network the same week that Malcolm X hit cinemas. And music would also be central to Bassett's next assignment.

Despite Halle Berry and Robin Givens being in the frame, Bassett landed the role of Tina Turner in Brian Gibson's What's Love Go to Do With It (1993). Based on Turner's autobiography, I, Tina, the picture exposed the abuse to which she had been subjected by her musician husband, Ike Turner (Laurence Fishburne). However, as the biopic had to be ready to coincide with Tina's world tour, Bassett only had a month to prepare for the shoot.

Having become 'almost a river of tears' at one of Turner's concerts, Bassett met with her twice to get tips on hair, costumes, and make-up. Tina also took her through some of her legendary dance moves. These were difficult enough without the high heels and Bassett was often exhausted after working 20-hour days on the set. She even broke her hand. However, she became the first African-American to win the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. Bassett was also nominated for an Oscar, only to lose out to Holly Hunter for Jane Campion's The Piano (1993).

Yet rather than being inundated with offers on the back of her success, Bassett was idle for 18 months before Melvin Van Peebles offered her the chance to play Betty Shabazz again in Panther (1995). This brought her back into contact with Courtney B. Vance, who was portraying Black Panthers leader Bobby Seale alongside Marcus Chong's Huey Newton. The pair were married in 1997 and remain together with their twins, Bronwyn and Slater, who were born to a surrogate in 2006 after several frustrating years of IVF.

Getting Her Groove Back

Bassett's second 1995 outing was Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days, a techno-noir co-scripted by the director's ex-husband, James Cameron. Set during the last two days of the 20th century in a no-go part of Los Angeles, the story centres on ex-LAPD officer Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) and the memories stored on an illegal SQUID plugged into his cerebral cortex. As chauffeur-cum-bodyguard Lornette 'Mace' Mason, Bassett strives to keep Fiennes out of trouble during the hunt for the killer of a prostitute because he had been kind to her son after his father was jailed.

Despite making innovative attempts to convey perspective and sensation, the film failed to find an audience. However, Bassett won the Saturn Award for Best Actress, while Norman 'Fatboy Slim' Cook sampled her line, 'This is your life, right here, right now!' for the 1998 single, 'Right Here, Right Now'.

The busy year next saw Bassett team with Eddie Murphy in Wes Craven's Vampire in Brooklyn (1995). Once again, the reviews were mixed and the takings disappointing. But the film has acquired a certain cachet, with Bassett more than holding her own as damphir detective Rita Veder opposite Murphy in a triple role. However, she had to endure the trauma of stunt double Sonja Davis being killed in a fall during the shoot.

Fortunately, Bassett found herself in the supportive company of Whitney Houston, Loretta Devine, and Lela Rochon in Forest Whitaker's adaptation of Terry McMillan's bestseller, Waiting to Exhale (1995). Bassett plays Bernadine Harris, who sacrificed her catering business in order to raise a family with husband John (Michael Beach). When he leaves her for a white colleague, however, Bernie avenges herself by torching his car and clothes and selling off the rest of his belongings. McMillan said of Bassett's performance, 'Angela's aura is about dignity and pride.'

After so much activity, Bassett was absent from the screen in 1996, while her sole venture the following year saw her cast as White House adviser Rachel Constantine in Robert Zemeckis's stellar adaptation of Carl Sagan's Contact (1997). She received a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the NAACP Image Awards, largely on the back of an intense scene with National Security chief James Woods, in which they discuss the ramifications of Jodie Foster's claimed encounter with extraterrestrials.

Having played Lady Macbeth opposite Alec Baldwin on the stage in New York, Bassett reunited with Terry McMillan on Kevin Rodney Sullivan's How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998). She excels as Stella Payne, a 40 year-old single mom and successful stockbroker, who arrives in Jamaica for a vacation and falls for chef's assistant Winston Shakespeare (Taye Diggs), who is half her age. Having been named Best Actress at the Acapulco Black Film Festival, Bassett also picked up the NAACP Image Award, alongside Whoopi Goldberg, who essayed her dying friend, Delilah.

After voicing the mother of an African American teenage who learns about the life of Martin Luther King in the Emmy-nominated educational, Our Friend, Martin, Bassett lost out to Catherine Zeta-Jones in a bid to co-star with Sean Connery in Jon Amiel's thriller, Entrapment. Instead, she linked up again with Wes Craven on Music of the Heart (all 1999), which was inspired by Allan Miller's Oscar-winning documentary, Small Wonders (1995). She plays Janet Williams, the principal of the Central Park East School in East Harlem, who hires Roberta Guaspari (Meryl Streep) as the new music teacher. Streep would be nominated for an Oscar, but Bassett won another NAACP Image Award, while also being nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Black Reel Awards.

Bassett might have won an Oscar of her own, but she rejected the role of Leticia Musgrove in Marc Forster's Monster's Ball (2001), as she felt it perpetuated 'a stereotype about black women and sexuality'. When Berry became the first African American to win the Academy Award for Best Actress, Bassett congratulated her, but explained, 'I would love to have an Oscar. But it has to be for something I can sleep with it at night.' Berry also inherited the role of Ororo Munroe (aka Storm) after Bassett turned down Bryan Singer's X-Men (2000).

The fact that Walter Hill used the alias Thomas Lee suggests that Supernova wasn't a happy project. Indeed, rumour has it that Jack Sholder and Francis Ford Coppola made considerable uncredited contributions to a space opera that saw Bassett cast as medical officer Kaela Evans aboard the 22nd-century Titan 37-bound craft, Nightingale 229. She followed this voyage to the final frontier by voicing Groove, a grouchy outsider who tries to protect her nephew from lions and poachers in Dereck Joubert's animation, Whispers: An Elephant's Tale (both 2000).

Bassett's next assignment also had an African setting. Adapted from a play by Athol Fugard, John Berry's Boesman and Lena (2000) is a grinding indictment of apartheid that follows the eponymous couple (Danny Glover and Bassett) after they are turfed out of their shack and have to eke out a living collecting bottles on the mudflats outside Cape Town. Bassett received another Black Reel nomination, as well as one at the Black Entertainment Television Awards. But the new millennium would prove a frustrating period, as few of the projects Bassett chose attained a high profile.

Bits and Bob

The pairing of Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando for the only time in screen history dominated Frank Oz's heist thriller, The Score (2001). Bassett is typically imposing, however, as Diane, the girlfriend with whom De Niro runs a Montreal jazz club. She's in more penitent mood as actress Desiree Stokes Perry in John Sayles's Sunshine State (2002), who returns to the Florida neighbourhood of Lincoln Beach to apologise to her mother, Eunice (Mary Alice), for their falling out over her teenage pregnancy.

Sadly, we can't bring you Bassett's turn as juke joint owner Ruby Delacroix in Peter Werner's Ruby's Bucket of Blood (2001) or her exceptional display in Julie Dash's The Rosa Parks Story (2002), as so few US teleplays secure UK disc releases. Surely an exception should have been made for the latter account of a Black woman's 1955 refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus to a white man, which earned Bassett the NAACP Image and Black Reel awards for Best Actress, as well as a Primetime Emmy nomination.

She remained in political mode in reading the slave narratives of Elizabeth Sparks and Mary Reynolds in Ed Bell and Thomas Lennon's documentary, Unchained Memories (2003). Later that year, Bassett cameo'd as a former mistress of wandering troubadour Jack Fate (Bob Dylan) in Larry Charles's Masked and Anonymous, which Dylan co-scripted under the pen name Sergei Petrov. She's more central to proceedings in Graham Theakston's The Lazarus Child (2004), as the controversial doctor Andy Garcia and Frances O'Connor hope can save their comatose daughter. However, this Ronald Bass-scripted horror was little seen.

Cinema Paradiso users can, however, see Bassett teaming with Bernie Mac in Charles Stone III's Mr 3000 (2004), as TV reporter Maureen Simmons covers the comeback of 47 year-old baseball star, Stan Ross, who needs two home runs to reclaim his 3000 record, after two were docked following the discovery of a clerical error. Members can also see Bassett's four 2005 episodes as CIA Director Hayden Chase in J.J. Abrams's espionage series, Alias (2001-06). However, they can only hear her uncredited voice as Brad Pitt's boss in Doug Liman's Mr & Mrs Smith (2005), as Bassett's scenes as Ms April were cut.

She is visible as Jill Greco guiding Homeland Security agent Mike Bookman (David Arquette) through a kidnap and bomb crisis at a Washington, DC sports stadium in Stephen Gyllenhaal's TV-movie, Time Bomb. Bassett also has to contend with a tense situation as widowed mother, Tanya Anderson, whose 11 year-old daughter (Keke Palmer) is bent on winning the National Spelling Bee in Doug Atchison's Akeelah and the Bee (2006), which would make for a splendid double bill with Jeffrey Blitz's Oscar-nominated documentary, Spellbound (2002).

Disney came calling for Bassett's next project, as she voiced Mildred, the head of the Sixth Street Orphanage where Lewis (Jordan Fry), an aspiring inventor hoping to be adopted, meets time traveller Wilbur Robinson (Wesley Singerman) in Stephen J. Anderson's Meet the Robinsons (2007). The third part of Tyler Perry's Madea cycle, Meet the Browns (2008), isn't available to rent, though, in spite of Bassett demonstrating her comic skills as struggling Chicago single mom, Brenda Brown-Davis.

Also frustratingly off limits is Giancarlo Esposito's directorial debut, Gospell Hill, in which Bassett plays teacher Sarah Malcolm, who alone is opposed to the demolition of the Black area of Julia, South Carolina in order to build a golf course. Bassett was married to Danny Glover again in this treatise on disposable history and she plays the deceased wife of Robert Townsend in Of Boys and Men (both 2008), another African American drama that is deemed to have no audience in the UK.

Bassett can next be seen as Capital Sun-Times editor Bonnie Benjamin encouraging reporter Rachel Armstrong (Kate Beckinsale) to expose a presidential lie following a failed assassination attempt in Rod Lurie's Nothing But the Truth (2008). Despite recovering from the loss of her son, Dr Catherine Banfield is also in control at Cook County General Hospital in the final season of ER (2008-09), which gave Bassett the chance to work with Courtney B. Vance, who was cast as her husband, Russell.

An Absolute Marvel

Bassett is considered the biopic queen and she was able to observe Voletta Wallace at close quarters, as the mother of Christopher Wallace (Jamal Woolard) served as a producer on George Tillman, Jr.'s Notorious (2009), which chronicled the brief, but eventful life of rapper Biggie Smalls, aka The Notorious B.I.G. Indeed, Bassett modelled her Jamaican accent on tapes that Wallace recorded specially for her. And Bassett had to perfect another voice in order to portray Michelle Obama in the 'Stealing First Base' episode of The Simpsons (1989-). Also in 2010, she appeared in Terrell Taylor's documentary, We the People: From Crispus Attucks to President Barack Obama.

Director Salim Akil offered Bassett a change of pace in Jumping the Broom (2011), as Claudine Watson, the wealthy Martha's Vineyard mother trying to organise the wedding of her daughter (Paula Patton) and the man she had met when bumping into him with her car (Laz Alonso). Bassett drew another Black Reel nomination, although some reviews suggested that she and Loretta Devine appeared locked in a struggle to be the screen's meanest mom.

The tussle proved apt preparation to play Amanda Waller, the government agent who is rescued from a steepling plunge by Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) in Martin Campbell's Green Lantern (2011). This infamous misfire afforded Bassett the opportunity to learn the techniques of acting in a CGI scenario, although DC fans complained that she bore no resemblance to the character in the comic-books.

Following leads in a couple of shunned pilots, Identity (2011) and Rogue (2012), Bassett paid tribute to erstwhile co-star Bernie Mac in Robert Small's documentary, I Ain't Scared of You. She also cropped up as Sarah Collins, the boss of Chris Pine and Tom Hardy in McG's This Means War, as the secret agents become rivals in love for Reese Witherspoon. The reviews were far from complimentary, although Bassett was commended in some quarters for her performance as Coretta Scott King opposite Mary J. Blige's Betty Shabazz in Yves Simoneau's teleplay, Betty & Coretta (all 2012), although respective daughters Bernice King and Ilyasah Shabazz were less impressed.

In 2013, Bassett signed up to play Secret Service chief Lynne Jacobs in Antoine Fuqua's Olympus Has Fallen, which required her to overcome a certain sense of awe at co-starring with Morgan Freeman, who plays the House Speaker who assumes the presidency after North Korean extremists seize the White House. Appearing in her first sequel, Bassett would reprise the role in Babak Najafi's London Has Fallen (2018), which shifted the scene to the UK and saw Jacobs accompany maverick agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), as he seeks to protect President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) at the funeral of the British prime minister.

Although she had lip-synched as Tina Turner, Bassett hadn't done much on-screen singing before admitting to having fibbed to director Kasi Lemmons ('Yes, I can sing - you didn't ask how well!') in order to play Aretha Cobbs in Black Nativity. Based on a 1961 Langston Hughes play, this poignant drama chronicles a teenager's rite of passage when he goes to spend the festive season with his preacher grandfather, Cornell Cobbs (Forest Whitaker).

Such wholesome family fare contrasted sharply with Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story: Coven (both 2013), which landed Bassett a Primetime Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as 19th-century voodoo priestess Marie Laveau. She repeated the feat the following season by excelling as Desiree Dupree, the three-breasted sideshow performer in American Horror Story: Freak Show (2014). Clearly having a ball Bassett returned as fading actress Ramona Royale seeking revenge on vampiric ex-lover, The Countess (Lady Gaga) in American Horror Story: Hotel (2015).

Unable to resist ('In Ryan Murphy's world, bigger is best and more is more. I get to chew some scenery.'), Bassett took the roles of Lee Harris and Monet Tumusiime in separate episodes of American Horror Story: Roanoke (2016), which centred on a haunted house in North Carolina. She even popped up as Marie Laveau again in an episode of American Horror Story: Apocalypse (2018). During this run, Bassett made her directorial debut with the tele-biopic, Whitney (2014). By casting Yaya DaCosta as her former co-star, however, she incurred the wrath of Bobbi Kristina Brown, who took to Twitter to complain that she had not been selected to play her mother.

Prior to a stint voicing Ana Spanakopita in the animated series, BoJack Horseman (2015-18), and Dr Kulinda in Curious George 3: Back to the Jungle (2015), Bassett had returned to the big screen as Dr Thaler, the therapist who helps Kat Connors (Shailene Woodley) process her feelings after her mother, Eve (Eva Green), suddenly disappears in Gregg Araki's adaptation of Laura Kasischke's novel, White Bird in a Blizzard (2014).

Returning to a position of power, Bassett played US Ambassador Maureen Crane in James McTeigue's Survivor, a spy thriller that pits diplomat Kate Abbott (Mila Jovovich) against a notorious assassin known as The Watchmaker (Pierce Brosnan). She also sought to defuse a tricky situation as Miss Helen Worthy in Spike Lee's Chi-Raq (both 2015), which transferred a Greek myth to the streets of Chicago's Southside, as Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris) imposes a sex strike in a bid to end the turf war between the Spartans and the Trojans.

Such roles matter to Bassett, who is very particular about which projects she selects. As she told one reporter: '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.' She had no qualms, therefore, about playing Ramonda, the mother of T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman), the ruler of Wakanda in Ryan Coogler's Marvel masterpiece, Black Panther (2018), which became the first superhero title to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Bassett would also make a queenly cameo in Anthony and Joe Russo's Avengers: Endgame (2019).

Sticking with blockbusting franchises, Bassett took on the role of CIA Director Erika Sloane pairing Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and August Walker (Henry Cavill) to recover some stolen plutonium in Christopher McQuarrie's Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018). Later that year, she voiced Shatter, a villainous Decepticon with the power to turn into a car and a jump jet in Bumblebee, Travis Knight's entry in the ongoing Transformers franchise.

But it wasn't all big-screen mayhem. In addition to guesting as Catherine, the mother of lesbian novelist Denise (Lena Waithe) in the sitcom, Master of None (2015-21), Bassett also took the lead of LAPD sergeant, Athena Grant in Ryan Murphy's 9-1-1 (2018-), which proved such a hit that she was reported as having become the best paid actress of colour in US broadcasting history by commanding upwards of $450,000 per episode. She has also featured in the spin-off series, 9-1-1: Lone Star (2022-).

Fresh from having been Carol Walker, a member of a Poughkeepsie collective of disappointed mothers (alongside Patricia Arquette and Felicity Huffman) in Cindy Chupack's comedy, Otherhood (2019), Bassett joined another impressive ensemble in Navot Papushado's Gunpowder Milkshake (2021). As Anna May, she got to wield a hammer as a librarian who leads a sisterhood of elite assassins that also includes Florence (Michelle Yeoh) and Madeleine (Carla Gugino), as they rally to help Sam (Karen Gillan), the daughter of their old comrade, Scarlet (Lena Headey).

Music dominated Bassett's next two pictures, as she voiced jazz icon Dorothea Williams in Pete Docter's three-time Oscar-nominated Pixar animation, Soul (2020), and paid tribute to Tina Turner in Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin's Emmy-nominated documentary, Tina (2021). She also rejoiced at being 'the voice of NASA' in Ryan White's wonderful Mars rover memoir, Good Night Oppy (2022). But Bassett was thrust back into the Oscar limelight, after a 29-year gap, when she became the first person to be nominated for an acting award for a Marvel Studios title, when she was cited for Best Supporting Actress for her Shakespearean display as Ramonda in Ryan Coogler's Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022).

The 64 year-old made more history by becoming the first performer to win a Golden Globe for a Marvel role. 'I've had a marvellous career,' she told the press. 'I stay working. But that particular role that grabs the attention of the audience and takes them on a journey? As our mothers would say, I can make a dollar out of fifteen cents.' She made no attempt to hide her frustration, therefore, when Jamie Lee Curtis took the Oscar for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheiner's Everything Everywhere All At Once, as she was acutely aware of the socio-cultural impact that her victory would have had.

Her awareness extends to the projects she producers with her husband. 'We're telling stories from historical and Black perspectives,' she stated recently. 'That's our mission: interesting, dynamic stories, whether historical or fictional. And behind the scenes to empower those who are trying to get a foothold or who might need an opportunity.' Among the imminent releases is One Thousand Years of Slavery, a four-part collaboration with Channel 5 that has been directed by David Olusoga. On the acting front, Bassett is due to team with Millie Bobby Brown in Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's fantasy, Damsel. One thing's for sure, having been named in 2023 as one of the 100 most influential people by Time magazine, there's plenty more to come from Angela Bassett.