Word: bassetts
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Directed by Brian Gibson and starring Angela Bassett as Tina and Laurence Fishburne as Ike, What's Love Got to Do with It is no movie masterpiece. The picture's canvas is so broad (40 years), and its depiction of Ike's brutality so encyclopedic, that it sometimes plays like a Greatest Hits package in which all the songs sound alike. But the film will be a crowd pleaser and a curative because Tina Turner has lent it the voltage of her star presence and the joltage of her awful, exemplary life. The concert stage was where she could release...
...never thought I could fill Tina Turner's shoes, not in a lifetime," says Angela Bassett of her knockout performance as the rock superstar. For Turner, however, it was just a matter of the right shoes. When she saw one of Bassett's outfits, Turner went shopping and bought her two pairs of zebra- striped high heels. For another scene, she literally gave Bassett the shirt off her . . . But let Bassett tell it: "When I did I Might Have Been Queen, I was wearing a little peach-colored T shirt. Tina said, 'Oh, that's so old- fashioned,' and took...
...passion for detail paid off. Bassett's impersonation of Turner is the kind of star-making turn that every actress dreams of -- and practically every black actress in Hollywood wanted. Halle Berry and Robin Givens were among the finalists for the role that went to Bassett, best known previously for Spike Lee's Malcolm X, in which she played Betty Shabazz, wife of the Black Muslim leader...
...native of St. Petersberg, Florida, Bassett, 34, went to Yale Drama School and spent most of her first professional decade shuttling unnoticed between Broadway (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom), television (Tour of Duty) and movies (John Sayles' City of Hope). The roles grew meatier -- she played the mother of a troubled ghetto youth in Boyz 'N the Hood and Michael Jackson's mom in abc's The Jacksons: An American Dream -- but she still labored in the shadows until Tina thrust her onto center stage...
...attend to the shading of character. As Washington says, "He basically left me alone and let me run with it." Lee's moods had opposite effects on the excellent actresses who play Malcolm's wife and his white hussy. "He laughs, laughs large," says Angela Bassett (Betty). "He's energy plus." But Kate Vernon (Sophia) says, "He was belligerent and disrespectful in tone toward me. There's a boys' club, and women are not allowed -- especially white women. I hated the idea of feeling excluded because I was white. The set was tense. I've heard all his sets...