Angela Bassett did the thing. And yet, that wasn't enough to win her a much-coveted Academy Award. In the moment of losing, her face betrayed a visceral disappointment seldom seen in such a setting nowadays, where fake smiles are de rigueur. Many used that flash of genuine emotion to lambast the actress, while others felt fueled by it in their outrage against AMPAS' choice. I've previously written about Jamie Lee Curtis, defending her work in Everything Everywhere All At Once, but that doesn't mean I didn't mourn Bassett's loss.
As a white Portuguese man, I can't pretend to know what the thespian and her potential victory would have meant for Black audiences, specifically Black women – read Angelica Jade Bastién's Vulture piece for that perspective and a marvelous analysis of the actress' gifts. However, I'm an Angela Bassett fan who thinks she should have an Oscar already, so the potential for a career win for Wakanda Forever felt like justice and her loss like a sting. So, as the month draws to a close and the 95th Academy Awards drift into the past, perhaps into collective closure, let me take you through Angela Bassett's career and my favorite of her big-screen achievements. After all, there's no better way to celebrate an artist than to appreciate their work...
Though I didn't count any TV performances, please know that some of Bassett's most fantastic performances were delivered on the small screen. Indeed, though she's only earned two nominations from AMPAS, the Emmys have honored her with seven nominations, starting with a Best Actress nod for The Rosa Parks Story in 2002. Even before that Julie Dash production, she had a sprawling TV career dating back to the mid-70s. Regarding personal favorites, I'd like to applaud her various characters in American Horror Story with particular admiration for the imperious Marie Laveau and her stint on the ER cast between 2008 and 2009.
Without further ado, let's dive into Angela Bassett's filmography, starting with her third credited movie role, as Reva Styles in…
BOYZ N THE HOOD (1991) John Singleton
The part of the mother is one Angela Bassett has played many times right from the beginning of her tenure on the silver screen. In the seminal classic of 1990s Black cinema, she showcases everything that makes directors keep returning to her as a maternal figure throughout the decades. Like an archeologist, Bassett digs deep into the recesses of the woman's complex personhood and her pride, unearthing histories the text merely hints at while illuminating all the possibilities of what's already on the page.
Whether leaving her son with another caretaker or confronting the boy's father, she's a consummate supporting player, working on the margins of the main narrative to flesh out Singleton's vision and the world depicted wherein. The role is slight, but for such a sublime performer, there are no small parts. We get a sense that, had the camera decided to follow her out of the male-dominated scenes, there's a whole other movie parallel to the one we're watching and just as riveting.
Boyz n the Hood is streaming on Starz.
MALCOLM X (1992) Spike Lee
The supportive wife is such a mainstay of biopic cinema it's hard to imagine anyone making the archetype interesting. And yet, Bassett rises to the challenge in her first collaboration with Spike Lee, breathing life into this interpretation of Betty Shabazz. Though she's always playing second fiddle to Denzel Washington's career-defining turn as Malcolm X, Bassett holds her own and captures the camera's attention, electrifying the screen whenever its gaze falls on her. She's magnetic in a way that threatens to transform the film around her, though never fights against its thesis.
From the first inklings of romance to the shock of widowhood, she traces a vast arc that runs along with the picture's political storytelling. There's tenderness at every step but also a sense of hard-won resilience as the pressures of a violent world bear down on the activist's wife. Of all her supporting turns, this might be the closest to a star-like performance, almost reminding one of those Old Hollywood leading ladies who could shine brightly even when they were secondary to a great man's story.
Malcolm X is streaming on HBO Max and Tubi.
WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT (1993) Brian Gibson
A teen playacts sensual womanhood, negotiating excitement for a man's charged gaze and the thrill of showing off her talents on stage. An accomplished artist stands in front of her audience, and her stony expression betrays the pain ravaging her throat. A single tear, glistening blue in the colored lights, speaks of matters of the exhausted body transcending into heartbreak. Listening to her voice slaying a new tune, a great singer negotiates pride at the achievement with fear of upsetting her husband. A mother tries to hide how terrified she is of her children's father, strained and desperate but also strong in her apparent fragility.
Angela Bassett's performance as Tina Turner has that to offer and a million other wonders, registering, to this day, as the crowning achievement in a career marked by consistent mastery. It's an awesome thing to witness, how much acting there's to parse and yet realize how it never transcends past the limits of 'just right' to fall into the realm of 'too much.' There's discipline to every choice, be it the euphoria of musical work in the recording booth or that famous scene where, bloody and battered, a superstar runs from her abusive spouse and seeks shelter, salvation.
Even in moments of lip-synching, the actress always remembers to illuminate the psychological depth of the woman she's portraying. But that's not all, for so much of this masterclass depends on a sort of expressive physicality that goes beyond mere mimicry. Sure, Bassett convinces as Tina Turner, from youth to middle age, from novice to veteran star. However, she also modulates the more mundane realities inherent to the singer's life story.
It's a titanic achievement full of pondered modulation to match its big gestures, so grand it's easy to understand why many still grumble about her Oscar loss. The sad thing is, had the biopic waited a year for release, that statuette would likely be Bassett's.
What's Love Got to do With It is available to rent and purchase on the major platforms.
STRANGE DAYS (1995) Kathryn Bigelow
Because of all its technical challenges, the scope of the role as written by Kate Lanier, it's fair to say that Tina Turner represents Angela Bassett's best performance. That said, I wouldn't call it my personal favorite. The title belongs, instead, to her Mace in Strange Days, a cyberpunk action thriller that finds Kathryn Bigelow showcasing the maximum musculature of her filmmaking. Bassett is as accomplished as her director, if not more, taking to action cinema as a duck takes to water.
Like in her first Oscar-nominated work, the thespian's physicality is on point, achieving exceptional heights as the story grows in feverish crescendo until it all goes down during its New Year's Eve climax. Still, how she maps Mace's emotional journey is just as impressive as her heroic presence. Playing your leading man's conscience isn't easy. Making that stock role feel profound and politically complicated is even more challenging. On Bassett hinge much of Strange Days' more audacious gambits, its parallels to real life outside the screen.
And to all these challenges, Bassett comes with impressive poise and a movie star's full confidence in her own powers. She makes it look effortless, almost easy. Unfortunately, genre work seldom gets awards recognition, it's true. Still, in my ideal world, Angela Bassett would have become an Oscar winner at the 68th Academy Awards, triumphing in the Best Supporting Actress category.
Strange Days is streaming on HBO Max.
WAITING TO EXHALE (1995) Forest Whitaker
In the same year she dazzled as Mace, Angela Bassett played one of the four leads in Waiting to Exhale, a melodrama focusing on the lives and tribulations of Black Women in contemporary America. Even if you haven't watched it, one image from the movie will ring familiar – it's that glorious vision of feminine vengeance, Bassett looking righteous and full of rage as she sets her cheating husband's car on fire. Maybe no other scene in film history better captures the very concept of fury, though to reduce Bassett's work to just that moment does her a disservice.
Thrown for an emotional tailspin, Bassett is Bernie Harris, who, after finding out her husband plans to leave her for another woman and take their business with him, sets fire to much of his property and sells the rest. Her story is one of overcoming wrath without necessarily looking back in judgment at her first scenes. More than anything, the actress articulates a sentimental education that doubles as the path to happiness. Emotional clarity is always at the forefront, as is an openness to a vulnerability that's not always what one thinks about when reflecting on the star's screen persona.
Still, you know what also does Bassett a disservice? Her movie, for no matter how much her storyline sings, the remaining narratives bring it down, pulling the whole thing into the pits of mediocrity by the weight of formal banality and a confused script. Still, watch it for Angela Bassett – her performance's worth it, and she's worth the world.
Waiting to Exhale is available to rent and purchase on most major services.
HOW STELLA GOT HER GROOVE BACK (1998) Kevin Rodney Sullivan
All about erotic fulfillment and the entertainment value of watching hot people be hot on screen together, How Stella Got Her Groove Back is a showcase for Angela Bassett at her loosest and most relaxed. Part of that alchemy stems from the script, characterizing the titular Stella as someone who needs to loosen up and gradually learns to let herself enjoy the joys of life. That this process can feel exciting and not incredibly clichéd when you're watching it unfold is a testament to Bassett's ability.
She overcomes whatever limitation the film may have as a piece of cinema, delivering an old-school movie star performance on the purest form such thing could reach in 1990s Hollywood. Moreover, her chemistry with leading man Taye Diggs feels perfectly calibrated, never too breezy nor too easy but constantly pulsing with sensual spark. Whether indulging in the stylings of romcom or navigating a late-film swerve into tear-jerking tragedy, Angela Bassett is in control - of herself and the screen she commands like a celluloid goddess.
How Stella Got Her Groove Back is streaming on Hulu.
BOESMAN & LENA (2000) John Berry
Claudine director John Berry ended his career with this stage adaptation, transposing Athol Fugard's seminal play to the big screen. Though the setting of apartheid-era South Africa is awfully concrete, there's a nearly mythic quality to how the scenery gets translated in cinematic terms. In sprawling widescreen vistas, the world inhabited by the titular characters feels remote in more ways than one, almost as if it existed at a distance from our reality, closer to a paradox of ancient apocalypse. It's like Boesman and Lena's pain has spread into the very fabric of reality.
Such levels of abstraction don't help separate the text from its theatrical origins, but neither Berry nor his actors feel especially interested in severing those ties. Watch Angela Bassett's Lena, and you'll always feel an umbilical cord connecting her to a stagebound past. Her delivery is a loving embrace of artificial speech made to transmit cutting concepts. After all, hers is a lie that speaks the truth, a rhapsody of stylized cadences rhyming with unexpected strikes of naturalistic manner. The performance is a poem written by a body that doesn't just exist on the scene but dances along with some internal force out of the camera's purview.
Even the actress' tendency to sometimes fall into declamatory delivery is weaponized to significant effect, with vocal regality repurposed to represent someone at the end of their rope. Aching in an expression of unimaginable plight, suffering exploded, Bassett is electrifying to watch, even when her fearlessness might make some see grotesquerie when regarding the work. Unfairly forgotten, it's essential viewing for any of the actress' fans.
Boesman & Lena isn't currently streaming on any of the major platforms. However, you can find a shoddy print uploaded on Youtube.
SUNSHINE STATE (2002) John Sayles
One of Angela Bassett's first forays into feature film was John Sayles' City of Hope in 1991. Eleven years later, the two reunited, with the actress playing a much more substantial role this time around. She's Desiree, a beauty queen turned aspiring actress turned disillusioned woman visiting her mother in Deltona Beach, Florida. Having left years ago, when she was still in high school, Desiree relates to everything and everyone with a modicum of trepidation, mayhap doubt, a prickle of cautionary reticence.
And so, much of the actress' work depends on the suggestion of histories left unspoken, writing a lifetime through measured reactions and the faint tension that blossoms between family, friends, past teachers, and old lovers. When recalling the events that made her leave in the first place, Bassett delivers an aria of reminiscence, losing herself in the memories as the scene settles on her face. Disappointment tinges the timbre of her voice, while each gesture is used with a dancer's intent, the most straightforward movement able of telling a whole story on its own.
Sunshine State can be rented and purchased in Apple iTunes, Amazon, Youtube, Google Play, and Vudu.
AKEELAH AND THE BEE (2006) Doug Atchison
From the mid-aughts to today, a good portion of Angela Bassett's big-screen work has been consumed by matriarchal roles. Generally, these parts are not especially complicated, with many a director relying on the actress to add dimensions to her characters. This is visible in various productions, some of which don't deserve Bassett's gift at all. Consider the dignity she brings to Black Christmas, even as her face lets slip a storm of regrets when standing by her husband's side in church. There are the romantic idealizations and resilience of Meet the Browns, the ice queen brittleness of Jumping the Broom, and even the Wakandan queen that earned her a second Oscar nomination.
Out of all these stalwart mothers, I chose to highlight one where Bassett's gift for seeing beyond the obvious is met by a script willing to reveal rather than obstruct that ability. In many ways, the pragmatic single mother of Akeelah Anderson spends most of the narrative as an obstacle standing between her daughter and the young girl's dreams. Yet, regardless if the scene draws her in adversarial or supportive tones, Bassett can continuously modulate her presence so that we're well aware of the internal conflicts whose existence might escape the protagonist's POV.
The performance also lives and dies in her dynamic with Keke Palmer. The older professional shares scenes with the kid under the rule of collaboration, avoiding every pitfall that can occur to veteran actors when working with children. Whether spoken aloud or silent, Bassett is always in active dialogue with her costars, the camera, her audience.
Akeelah and the Bee is streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Tubi, and the Roku Channel.
CHI-RAQ (2015) Spike Lee
Inspired by Aristophanes' Lysistrata, Chi-Raq is the closest Spike Lee has come to directing a musical since the 90s, maybe since School Daze. Even when there are no songs, theatrical stylization abounds, with reticulated language replacing tunes deployed to express what common words cannot. The cast takes to the material with different degrees of comfort, with the best in show being those who embrace their director's bold approach in broad strokes, full of fury and color. Playing a grieving mother set aflame, fueled by outrage, Angela Bassett is a sight to be seen.
In many ways, the actress gets to be the vessel through which Lee exposes the piece's activist intentions, advocating for non-violent protest in a mission against guns. When she's allowed to explode, Bassett can be incandescent. Nevertheless, there's value in observing her dormant strength, the power she yields by merely existing on-screen and shining like a beacon of resoluteness. In a just world, Angela Bassett would have been in the Best Supporting Actress conversation back in 2015, but, as usual, she was overlooked. Maybe things will change in the future – hope is everlasting.
Chi-Raq is streaming on Amazon Prime Video and Freevee.
What are your favorite Angela Bassett performances? Please share your top tens in the comments.