THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 12, 1995 TAG: 9510120012
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Profile
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
``SHE'S VERY STRONG; she's very capable, and she kicks everybody's butt. It's that simple. You don't mess with her.''
That was producer-writer James Cameron talking about Mace Mason, the heroine of his new film ``Strange Days.'' One might well suspect that Cameron is also talking about Angela Bassett, the actress chosen to play the role. After all, Bassett was equally physical in her star-making, Oscar-nominated role as pop diva Tina Turner in ``What's Love Got to Do With It.''
The expectations are shattered, though, when you meet Bassett.
She is soft-spoken, tentative and extremely introspective as she sits at the Regency Hotel in New York City to analyze the whirlwind career that has taken her through the Oscar nomination and three widely varying films this year.
``Yes, this is another physical role,'' she said, ``but it's very different from `What's Love Got to Do With It.' In that, I danced. In this, I run. No one can say I walked through this part. I run every step of the way.''
``Strange Days,'' which is directed by Cameron's ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow, should spark debate for months to come. It's set amid racial turmoil and the morally decaying society of Los Angeles on New Year's Eve, 1999, which is either the beginning of a new century or the end of the world.
Mace is the moral center of the film, surrounded by a world in which buildings are in ruin and residents face military checkpoints at every turn. She's a former waitress, a single mother who works 12-hour shifts driving her bullet-proof limousine through the turmoil for high-paying customers. She also serves as the guide through the underworld (and the only friend) to a lowlife hustler played by Ralph Fiennes (Oscar nominee for ``Schindler's List'').
``I play the sidekick, the kind of moral force that is the partner to the flawed hero,'' Bassett said. ``That's a part that is usually reserved for males. This part was not ever written as a male. She was always perceived as a black woman. That's very cool and very right.''
Strength mixed with vulnerability describes most of her screen characterizations: as the single mother trying to raise her troubled, teenage son in ``Boyz N the Hood''; as Betty Shabazz, wife of Malcolm X in Spike Lee's biography; the riveting performance as Tina Turner.
``I'm proud of some pretty good choices,'' Bassett said. ``They are all different.''
She turned down numerous scripts while she waited for the right follow-up to ``What's Love. . . '' Among them was ``Jade,'' the sexy thriller that also opens this week.
``It wasn't my taste,'' she said. ``I wanted a more heroic heroine.''
In a few weeks, she'll star with Eddie Murphy in ``A Vampire in Brooklyn.'' ``I'm pretty serious in it,'' she said. ``The comedy is around me, but I'm pretty much the damsel in distress. Eddie comes to Brooklyn to find the one woman who can carry on his race of vampires. I'm that woman. I never do, quite, get to bite his neck - but almost. Eddie was hilarious on the set, but I was a little surprised that this isn't as comedic as you'd think. It's a mixture of comedy and horror.''
At Christmas time, ``Waiting to Exhale'' will be released. ``I play a wife and mother whose husband comes home on New Year's Eve and tells her that he's leaving her for another woman. There's that vulnerability thing again, with strength, too.''
She doesn't feel ready to take on the mantle of filmdom's top black actress - a title held at various times by Dorothy Dandridge or Cicely Tyson. She was upset earlier in the day when someone had suggested, with good intentions, that ``either you or Halle Berry are going to get all the roles.''
``If they want Halle, then they don't want me,'' she explained. ``We're totally different.''
The sculpted biceps that were so formidable in ``What's Love Got to Do With It'' are softer now, but she claims that she still hits the weights. ``You have to have strength, and it doesn't come without training. The filming on `Strange Days' was delayed several times, so I worked out more than I might have, but I learned to train for toning not for bulk.''
Bassett decided to pursue acting after a high school field trip to the Kennedy Center in Washington to see James Earl Jones in ``Of Mice and Men.'' She earned both a Bachelor of Arts degree (from Yale) and a Masters of Fine Arts (from the highly prestigious Yale School of Drama) before moving to New York.
On Broadway, she appeared in August Wilson's plays ``Ma Rainey's Black Bottom'' and ``Joe Turner's Come and Gone.''
``What I need now is to do enough movies so that my name will mean something in selling tickets when I get back to stage,'' she said. ``You only do stage because you love it. You can't make any money, not even a real living.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by 2oth Century Fox
Angela Bassett is te only friend to lowlife Ralph Fiennes in the
futuristic "Strange Days."
Color photo by Touchstone Pictures
Bassett starred as pop diva Tina Turner in "What's Love Got to Do
With It." Laurence Fishburne played husband Ike.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE INTERVIEW by CNB