My mother’s family is a parade of sharp cheekbones in shifting hues of brown. It became clear that I had inherited them in my 20s, and now, finally, I look a bit like my mum, my number one cheekbone inspiration. There is a non-familial second choice, though: American actor Angela Bassett, aka one of the few unrelated women I wish was an aunt.
Bassett, 58, is hard to miss, as I discovered when I first saw her, playing Betty Shabazz in Spike Lee’s 1992 film Malcolm X. She looked to me like an auntie, all clear eyes and proud chin – and that bone structure. I remember gnashing my teeth a year later, when she didn’t win the Oscar for her portrayal of Tina Turner in the biopic What’s Love Got To Do With It. If you haven’t seen it, you should: it’s a barnstormer. People remember the flinty spirit she displayed (I think it got her semi-typecast as for ever stern), but I love Bassett best when she’s telegraphing pure vulnerability; when the stoicism she does so well unravels. Her jaw quivers, her lips tremble, her eyes flash. She’s a gorgeous crier.
Bassett gives all this and more in 1995’s Waiting To Exhale, playing a woman surprised by a divorce. She’s a powerhouse, and I am still waiting for the day Hollywood realises how it’s shortchanged her.
At least she’s a steady worker – across genres, too – which means we’ve see her in projects as diverse as superhero movie Black Panther (2018) and Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story TV series. Most recently, she guest-starred in the Netflix comedy Master Of None, and acted almost everyone else off the screen. Age cannot wither her, nor those cheekbones.
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