Tampa Bay's biggest living celebrity: Angela Bassett
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Tampa Bay's Angela Bassett at the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences' 14th Annual Governors Awards in 2024. Photo: Emma McIntyre/WireImage
Angela Bassett did the thing.
State of play: According to Axios Tampa Bay readers, the legendary two-time Golden Globe winner, Academy Award honoree and Boca Ciega High alumna is Tampa Bay's biggest living celebrity.
- John Cena may be the wrestler, but Bassett, with 67% of the vote, totally crushed him.
Flashback: Bassett was born in Harlem but moved to St. Petersburg's Jordan Park as a child with her late mother, Betty Bassett, according to newspaper and magazine archives.
- In high school, she was a cheerleader and became the first Black student to join Boca Ciega's National Honor Society.
- Her mom stressed the importance of school, once telling her when she brought home a C — an "average grade," as the younger Bassett put it — "I don't have average children!"
Acting entered the picture when she was a sophomore, enrolled in an Eckerd College program for high school students called Upward Bound.
- A director there saw potential in Bassett and picked her to attend a seminar in Washington, she told the Nerdist Podcast in 2016.
- At the Kennedy Center, watching a production of "Of Mice and Men," she was so moved that she broke down crying, she told Parade Magazine in 2002. "At 15, she had found her dream," the article says.
Back in St. Pete, she acted at school, church and the St. Petersburg Little Theatre (now called the City Theatre), before heading to Yale University for college.
What she's saying: "The first time I acted was in high school in Florida, and when I heard that applause I felt so alive and felt that electricity go up my spine," she told The New York Times in 1993.
- "It's still that way now. I love doing this so much."
The bottom line: To exist in the same community where Bassett got her start is really our honor.
