Posters / Strange Days / 1995

Posters

Strange Days

1995

FONTSINUSE

‘Anger doesn’t serve me’ 
Angela Bassett

Interview

Angela Bassett: 'Anger doesn't serve me. If I'm frustrated, I just do better’

From Boyz N the Hood to playing Tina Turner, Angela Bassett has always been a trailblazer. But Close to the Enemy, Stephen Poliakoff’s latest drama about war-ravaged Britain, presented a new type of challenge

Emine Saner
Sunday 6 November 2016

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little over a month ago, Angela Bassett stood on stage at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC and took her place in the evening’s celebration to mark the inauguration of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. She must have felt a little rush of her own history. It was at the theatre where Bassett sat as a 15-year-old, watching a production of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. She had come from Florida, where she lived, as part of an enrichment programme which took teenagers on cultural outings. She sat there, watching James Earl Jones play Lennie, and it changed her life. “I was so moved by the way this theatre experience affected me,” she says. “I couldn’t believe I felt all these emotions from watching a play.”