Angela Bassett

Alluring audiences with emotionally tinged performances has been the signature of Angela Bassett who personifies a sense of dignity and pride whenever she appears on screen. Her talent and abilities as an actress and executive producer in both television and film have time and again earned the respect and acclaim from her peers and her fans to prove herself to be one of the industry’s premier leading ladies.

Bassett recently starred in the critically-acclaimed Akeelah and the Bee. She also received rave reviews for her work in August Wilson’s classic play “Fences” at the prestigious Pasadena Playhouse. She was most recently seen on the big screen in the leading role in Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns, and Giancarlo Esposito’s Gospel Hill and Nothing but the Truth. She will also be playing “Voletta Wallace,” mother of slain rapper, Christopher "Notorious B.I.G." Wallace in Notorious due out in 2009. She is currently guest starring on the hit television show ER.

A successful author, her book FRIENDS: A Love Story reveals the real-life love story of Bassett and her husband Courtney Vance, who were friends for many years before marrying.

Perhaps best known for her intense portrayal of Tina Turner in the biopic What’s Love Got to Do with It opposite Laurence Fishburne, Bassett earned the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama as well as an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Motion Picture and earned an Academy Award nomination for her powerful performance.

Bassett has received nine NAACP Image Awards for her performances in How Stella Got Her Groove Back, The Score, Music of the Heart, Malcolm X, and the television movie Ruby’s Bucket of Blood. Basset also received NAACP Image Award nominations for her work in Contact and Boesman and Lena. In addition, she received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for her performance in Ruby’s Bucket of Blood and an Emmy nomination for Best Actress in a television movie for her work in The Rosa Parks Story.

Other memorable roles include a recurring role in the hit drama series Alias, the comedy Mr. 3000 with Bernie Mac, John Sayles’ Sunshine State with Edie Falco, Terry McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale co-starring Whitney Houston, James Cameron’s futuristic Strange Days with Ralph Fiennes, Vampire in Brooklyn opposite Eddie Murphy, and Supernova with James Spader. She was recently heard in theaters across the country voicing the character of “Mildred” in Disney’s animated smash hit Meet the Robinsons, based on the successful children’s book of the same name by William Joyce.

Beginning her career on stage, this Yale School of Drama graduate completed several productions on and off Broadway, which include “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Colored People’s Time,” “Henry IV, Part I” and “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” “Antigone,” Pericles,” and Black Girl.” She returned to the stage in 1998 to star opposite Alec Baldwin in “Macbeth” at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York.

Bassett first made the successful crossover to the silver screen when she appeared in a small but rich role as the ambitious single mother who sends her son to live with his father in John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood. She also appeared in the ABC mini-series The Jacksons: An American Dream, receiving critical raves for her touching performance as “Katherine Jackson” as well as receiving an Emmy nomination for the “Uncle Jed’s Barbershop” episode of PBS’ Storytime and critical nods for narrating the miniseries, Africans in America, also for PBS.