Angela Bassett

Bassett began her stage career with Black Girl at Second Stage Theatre in 1985. She appeared in August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom at Yale Repertory Theatre in 1984 and Joe Turner's Come and Gone in 1986. She later starred in Fences at Pasadena Playhouse in 2006.

Bassett made her television debut in the television film Doubletake in 1985 and her film debut in F/X in 1986. Her early television credits included A Man Called Hawk and 227 in 1989. She gained recognition for her roles in Boyz n the Hood (1991), Malcolm X (1992), The Jacksons: An American Dream (1992) and What's Love Got to Do with It (1993), portraying Tina Turner. She later appeared in Panther (1995), Waiting to Exhale (1995), Strange Days (1995), Vampire in Brooklyn (1995), Contact (1997), How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998) and Music of the Heart (1999).

In 2000, Bassett appeared in Supernova, Whispers: An Elephant's Tale and Boesman and Lena. Her subsequent film credits included The Score (2001), Sunshine State (2002), The Rosa Parks Story (2002), Masked and Anonymous (2003), The Lazarus Child (2004), Mr. 3000 (2004), Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005), Akeelah and the Bee (2006), Meet the Robinsons (2007), Gospel Hill (2008), Of Boys and Men (2008), Nothing But the Truth (2008), Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns (2008) and Notorious (2009). She also starred as Dr. Catherine Banfield on ER from 2008 to 2009.

Bassett appeared in The Simpsons (2010), voicing Michelle Obama, and played Amanda Waller in Green Lantern (2011). She starred in the Broadway production of The Mountaintop in 2011 and appeared in Jumping the Broom (2011) and This Means War (2012). She portrayed Coretta Scott King in the television film Betty and Coretta (2013), appeared in Olympus Has Fallen (2013) and Black Nativity (2013), and joined American Horror Story as Marie Laveau in 2013. She returned for American Horror Story: Freak Show (2014) and later appeared in American Horror Story: Roanoke (2016), for which she also directed an episode.

Bassett made her feature-film directorial debut with the television film Whitney (2015). Her other credits during the decade included Survivor (2015), London Has Fallen (2016), Underground (2017), Master of None (2017), Black Panther (2018), Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018), Bumblebee (2018) and Gunpowder Milkshake (2021). She also joined the television series 9-1-1 in 2018 as Athena Grant and serves as an executive producer on the series.

In 2020, Bassett voiced Dorothea Williams in Soul. She reprised her role as Queen Ramonda in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) and appeared in Damsel (2024). She also starred as the President of the United States in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025).