#WCW: Angela Bassett.

Angela Bassett has been in the acting game since the mid-1970’s, making an impression on the industry with her immense talent, poise, intelligence, and head-turning looks. She has the kind of on-screen presence that is hard to forget, which is right in line with beauty &mdash: effortless at every turn and truly getting better with each year.



The actress and film director is a New York City woman, born in Harlem. At just one year old, she moved to Winston-Salem, North Carolina to live with her father’s sister, and then on to St. Petersburg, Florida later in her adolescence with her younger sister.

Schooling had always been important to Angela from a young age and she went on to attend Yale University, getting her B.A. degree in African-American studies. Just three years later, she earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Yale School of Drama. That was the starting point of her relationship with husband Courtney B. Vance, as he graduated from the Drama School just a few years later.

The world fell in love with Angela in the early 90’s, thanks to films including Boyz In The Hood and Malcolm X — the latter for which she won an Image Award. Playing Katharine Jackson in The Jacksons: An American Dream, Tina Turner in What’s Love Got To Do With It, and Bernadine Harris in Waiting to Exhale served to catapult her into stardom. During that time, she won a Golden Globe and Academy Award: becoming the first African-American to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

From spiky short cuts to long, flowing box braids, we’ve seen Angela wear it all. We could craft an entire post or two about her hairstyles alone! Her makeup is always the perfect complement — she loves a smoky eye and bold lips, but pulls off dewy skin and a barely there look just as easily.

In the style department, it’s all about accentuating her flawless figure. Her toned arms and enviable legs are often on display in short-sleeve dresses, figure-skimming numbers, and even a crop top to show us all how it’s really done.

With the Whitney movie under her belt, a recurring role on American Horror Story, and films Survivor and London Has Fallen on the way, we can expect to see a lot more of Angela this year. She literally continues to defy aging and is a beacon of natural beauty for women of all ages.

Is Angela Bassett one of your beauty crushes?