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Honorary Degree Recipient
Angela Bassett
Actress
Doctor of Humane Letters
Biographical NoteAngela Bassett-Vance is an actress who breaks boundaries, who does not believe in limits, and who operates with sheer determination.
In a time when quality roles for women are few and far between—and those for African Americans fewer still—Angela Bassett-Vance’s rise to the top of Hollywood’s A-list is truly an extraordinary feat.The fortitude that she has conveyed on the big screen, seems to have its basis in her real life. Angela was born on August 16, 1958, in New York City and grew up with her sister, D’nette, in Petersburg, Florida. She was inspired by her single mother, Betty, who attended night school to secure a position in social services in order to get the family off public assistance.
On a high school trip to Washington, D.C. as part of the Upward Bound Program, she became inspired to act after seeing a Kennedy Center production of Of Mice and Men, starring James Earl Jones. Encouraged by a high school teacher, she went on to study at Yale on scholarship, earning a B.A. in Afro-American Studies and an M.F.A. in drama under the renowned stage director, Lloyd Richards. He cast her in the Broadway productions of two August Wilson plays, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.
Despite her early success on stage, Angela had to work hard to break through the stereotypical roles usually assigned to African-American women on screen. Her first role was a bit part in the cult favorite, F/X (1986). In 1991, she had a key role in the seminal anti-gang film, Boyz ‘N the Hood. A year later, she landed the role of Katherine Jackson, mother of the Jackson Five singing group in The Jacksons: an American Dream (1992). Angela continued her stream of strong women roles by portraying Betty Shabazz in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X (1992) with Denzel Washington, and turned in an outstanding performance in her breakthrough role as Tina Turner in What’s Love Got To Do With It? (1993), earning her an Academy Award nomination.
She co-starred with Whitney Houston in the adaptation of Terry McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale in 1995, and in 1998, headlined another McMillan adaptation, How Stella Got Her Groove Back. In Jodie Foster’s extraterrestrial-encounter film, Contact (1997), Bassett portrayed a top-level presidential advisor. Her performances in Strange Days, Music of the Heart, and Contact showed that she could more than hold her own in mainstream films—without the back-up of a mostly Black cast. She is one of the few African-American talents to break this color boundary, testimony to her fine acting abilities. Back on stage, she played Lady MacBeth in Shakespeare’s MacBeth, co-starring Alec Baldwin, at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York City in 1998.
Angela is married to actor Courtney B. Vance, stage and film star.
