Angela Bassett

Angela Bassett may have been born in New York, but the Academy Award-nominated thespian has called California home for years. The 50-year-old is back on the big screen this weekend (she stars in TV's "E.R." in a recurring role) in "Notorious." The actress has been earning good reviews for her portrayal of late rapper Notorious B.I.G.'s mother, Voletta Wallace, in the just-released biopic, and says she took the role only after meeting with the slain hip-hop icon's mother in person.

A high-energy mix of spectacular music, vigorous acting and cliched situations, this 1993 release is a rough-and-rowdy fairy tale with a feminist subtext. If that sounds perplexing, it pumps up the volume so much you won't have much time to think about it. Although subtitled "The True Life Story of Tina Turner," the film has less in common with anyone's reality than with generations of glossy show-biz biopics. The biggest assets in the film are the exceptional actors who play Tina and Ike.

If there were a Goddess of Gravity, one imagines she would resemble Angela Bassett. And it's not just because of such supernal physical attributes as her taut, regal cheekbones, sleek, symmetrical physique and expansive, penetrating eyes. It's something less tangible, yet somehow more palpable: a magnetic field of serenity, coated with steel yet warm to the touch. It's easy to think she was born encased in the element that keeps things connected to the earth.

If there were a Goddess of Gravity, one imagines she would resemble Angela Bassett. And it's not just because of such supernal physical attributes as her taut, regal cheekbones, sleek, symmetrical physique and expansive, penetrating eyes. It's something less tangible, yet somehow more palpable: a magnetic field of serenity, coated with steel yet warm to the touch. It's easy to think she was born encased in the element that keeps things connected to the earth.

ONE doesn't so much interview Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne as sit back and watch as their friendship, wordplay and enthusiasm for their craft plays itself out. "I think we both have a genuine respect and love for what we do," said Bassett. "Theater is sacred." "It's church," said Fishburne. "And what we do is sacred," added Bassett.

Having excelled onscreen as Ike and Tina Turner, Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett will play fiercely battling spouses again -- this time onstage at the Pasadena Playhouse -- as Troy and Rose Maxson, the embittered ex-ballplayer and his wife at the heart of August Wilson's 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, "Fences."

CBS has made a movie about Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus in 1955 and helped spark the civil rights movement. Angela Bassett, left, will portray Parks in the film that will be broadcast Feb. 24, with Cicely Tyson as her mother.

You can't judge a movie by its title. Especially in the case of "Ruby's Bucket of Blood," a new Showtime movie premiering Saturday on the cable network. Despite its Grand Guignol moniker, "Ruby's Bucket of Blood" is not some gory horror flick, but a sexy, sultry drama with a hefty dose of blues music that stars Angela Bassett--who doubles as the film's producer--Kevin Anderson, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Jurnee Smollett.

Danny Glover and Angela Bassett are two of the most acclaimed and successfulAfrican American actors working today. And they usually star in big movies; Glover has had great success in the "Lethal Weapon" series with Mel Gibson as well as in such films as "The Color Purple" and "Grand Canyon." Bassett received an Oscar nomination as Tina Turner in 1993's "What's Love Got to Do With It" and headlined such hits as "Waiting to Exhale" and "How Stella Got Her Groove Back."

"Boesman & Lena" begins with a flurry of black-and-white images thatfirst show people fleeing from their shantytown community, then cut to a mudflat alongside a river somewhere in the countryside outside Cape Town, South Africa, where a ragged-looking couple, among those driven from their makeshift shelters, have taken refuge. That's how the late John Berry begins his film of Athol Fugard's 1969 play, with Danny Glover and Angela Bassett triumphing in the title roles.