Angela Bassett Receives Well Deserved Oscars ‘Governors Award’

The 14th Governors Awards took place last night January 9th. The evening honored the legendary Angela Bassett, Mel Brooks, Carol Littleton and Michelle Satter with a ceremony held at the Ray Dolby Ballroom in Los Angeles.

Regina King honored Angela Bassett for her Honorary Oscar, for her legacy of work.

In her speech, Angela Bassett paid tribute to the 10 Black women who have won Academy Awards and stated she hoped the film industry would provide more opportunities for people of color.

Those actresses; Cicely Tyson, Hattie McDaniel, Whoopi Goldberg, Halle Berry, Jennifer Hudson, Mo’Nique, Octavia Spencer, Lupita Nyong’o, Regina King, and Ariana DeBose.

“My prayer is that we leave this industry more enriched, forward-thinking and inclusive than we found it. At the end of the day, we all just want to have the opportunity to do great, meaningful work.”

Angela Bassett continued; “This honor isn’t just for or about me. What I hope this moment means is that we are taking the necessary steps toward a future in which it is the norm, not the exception, to see and embrace one another’s full humanity, stories and perspectives. This must be our goal, and to always remember that there is room for us all. When we stand together, we win together. To all my fellow Black actresses, fill your hearts with courage and strength, because regardless of what you may think or see or feel, our contributions do matter. Remember who you are, and how our ancestors intended us to be. I proudly share this honor with women who stand up when they are told to stand back, who speak up when they are silenced … these women represent those I have been honored to portray, as well as the everyday women who surround us and inspire us to keep striving.”

Angela Bassett was born in New York and raised in Florida. She studied acting for many years at the Yale School of Drama, from which she graduated. It was on the stages of Broadway and television sets that she began her career. Between 1985 and 1990, she was very present in numerous television series and TV films.

She then worked with Wes Craven, who gave her one of the two central roles in the fantasy comedy A Vampire in Brooklyn . She also played the female lead in Strange Days produced in 1995 by James Cameron and directed by Kathryn Bigelow.

On television, we often see her in the skin of very important female characters in the black American community: from Katherine Jackson to Martin Luther King’s wife in Betty and Coretta (2013) via Rosa Parks.

In the cinema, she twice took on the role of Malcolm X’s wife, Betty Shabazz, in Spike Lee’s film Malcolm X, two big-budget films in which she was one of the headliners, the actress experienced a clear loss of notoriety and appeared, during this decade, in minor films (Sunshine State in 2002, Masked and Anonymous in 2003, Mr. 3000 in 2004, Notorious BIG in 2008) or TV films (Under High Voltage).

Angela also has a recurring role in the final season of ER , where she stars with Courtney B. Vance, her husband in the city, who plays her husband in the series.

In 2011, she made an appearance in Green Lantern, by Martin Campbell, then, the following year, in the action romantic comedy Target. In 2013, she joined star actors Gerard Butler, Morgan Freeman and Aaron Eckhart in the cast of the action film The White House Has Fallen (a role she reprised in London Has Fallen).

Integrating the MCU via the character of Ramonda who appears in Black Panther, Avengers: Endgame and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the New York native delivers solid performances in Black Nativity, White Bird, Survivor, Chi-Raq, Mission: Impossible: Fallout, Our Lives After Them and Bloody Milkshake.

But it is undoubtedly on the small screen that she finds her best roles, as evidenced by her characters in Close to the Enemy (2016), American Horror Story (2013-2018) and 9-1-1 (2018- 2022).

Past recipients of the Governors Award are Cicely Tyson, Samuel L. Jackson, Donald Sutherland and Jackie Chan.