Angela Bassett

Angela Evelyn Bassett is an American actress and voice actress, who, for Disney voiced Mildred in the 2007 Disney animated feature film Meet the Robinsons, Groove in Whispers: An Elephant's Tale, and Dorothea Williams in Disney/Pixar's 2020 film Soul. She also played Tina Turner in the 1993 Touchstone Pictures film What's Love Got to Do with It, in which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, and Maureen Simmons in Mr. 3000. In the MCU, she played Queen Ramonda of Wakanda in two 2018 films: Black Panther and Avengers: Endgame, then reprised this role in the 2021 Disney+ series What If...? and the 2022 film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. She also served as the narrator for the Disney+ documentary series The Imagineering Story. For her role as Queen Ramonda, she received a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the 95th Academy Awards.

Bassett was born in New York and attended Yale University for African American Studies, and later their School of Drama, obtaining a Master of Fine Arts degree. After graduation, Bassett worked as a receptionist for a beauty salon and as a photo researcher while also looking for work in theater. Eventually, she appeared in plays, such as Black Girl, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, and Fences, co-starring with frequent collaborator Laurence Fishburne.

She gained recognition in the film industry with appearances in Boyz n the Hood, Malcolm X, Notorious, Vampires in Brooklyn, Waiting to Exhale (alongside Whitney Houston), Strange Days, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Akeelah and the Bee, Olympus Has Fallen, and Black Nativity. She has also appeared in television films, portraying real-life individuals, such as Katherine Jackson in The Jacksons: An American Dream, Coretta Scott King in Betty & Coretta, and Rosa Parks in The Rosa Parks Story, where she received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie. On television, she appeared in shows, such as Search for Tomorrow, The Cosby Show, Guiding Light, 227, The Simpsons, Bojack Horseman, and various spin-offs of American Horror Story.