Angela Bassett: Interesting facts about the actress | Age, family, movies, awards, etc.

The 96th Academy Awards have come and gone, with Oppenheimer hogging the headlines after winning seven awards. The 2024 Oscars mainly celebrated the best of the film industry in 2023, although three other individuals received recognition for what they had achieved during their career, by way of the Academy Honorary Awards, including Angela Bassett.

Bassett honoured at Annual Governors Awards

Along with veteran actor and comedian Mel Brooks, and film editor Carol Littleton, Bassett actually first received the prize at the 14th Annual Governors Awards in January, in honour of a glittering career that has seen her become one of Hollywood’s top-tier actresses.

Born in New York City on 16 August 1958, the 65-year-old made her first appearance on our screens in 1985, when she appeared in long-running America soap opera Search For Tomorrow, a year before it’s 35-year run on CBS and NBC came to an end, and as a prostitute in the TV movie Doubletake. Bassett had previously performed at various theatre productions in New York.

How many Oscar nominations has Bassett received?

Her big breakthrough, though, came in 1993, when she was cast as Tina Turner in What’s Love Got to Do with It?, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress and the first of two Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical.

She was again nominated for an Oscar (this time as Best Supporting Actress) in 2019 for her performance as Queen Ramona in Black Panther, which won three Academy Awards. Bassett didn’t receive one herself, although she did win her second Golden Globe (Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture) after reprising the role in 2022 sequel Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

A huge fan of the Jackson 5 in her youngest years, Bassett played their mother Katherine Jackson in the 1992 miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream, and received Emmy Award nominations for her roles in TV movie The Rosa Parks Story in 2002 and horror series American Horror Story in 2014 and 2015.

Who is Angela Bassett married to? How many children does she have?

When Bassett was around 18 months old, her parents sent her to live with her aunt following the birth of her younger sister, although she returned to live with her mother, who had divorced her father, when she was four.

The New York-native studied African-American Studies at Yale University and then acting at Yale School of Drama, where she met future husband Courtney B. Vance, who himself has won two Primetime Emmy Awards.

After more than a decade together, the couple married in 1997 and have two children, a son named Slater and a daughter named Bronwyn, twins who were born via a surrogate in January 2006.