Actress, director, and executive producer Angela Bassett will be honored with the Make-up Artists & Hair Stylist Guild’s (MUAHS, IATSE Local 706) 2023 Distinguished Artisan Award. She will accept the honor at the Annual MUAHS Awards, celebrating the 10th Anniversary, on Saturday, February 11, at The Beverly Hilton. Bassett is most recently acclaimed for her creative work on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, for which she has received a Golden Globe Award and a SAG Award nomination, in addition to the hit primetime television drama “9-1-1.”
“Local 706 wishes to show its appreciation to Angela Bassett, who has portrayed amazingly iconic women we can all relate to. She boldly collaborates with her 706 make-up and hair teams to extend their imaginations and develop magical but always relatable characters you will remember forever–from the beloved Queen Ramonda to feisty Tina Turner to Bernadine in Waiting to Exhale. We couldn’t think of a better person to help us celebrate our 10th anniversary,” said Julie Socash, president of IATSE Local 706.
The Distinguished Artisan Award will celebrate the prolific spectrum of Bassett’s versatile career on screen and television. The award honors talent that has created memorable characters throughout their career, richly enhanced by the consistent collaboration of make-up and hair styling artistry. Previous recipients include Jon Favreau, Eddie Murphy, Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Ryan Murphy, Dick Smith, Guillermo del Toro, Sir Patrick Stewart, Melissa McCarthy, and Gary Oldman.
Bassett is an actress, director, and executive producer known for captivating, emotionally tinged performances full of dignity in treasured films such as Waiting To Exhale, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, and the Tina Turner biopic What’s Love Got To Do With It, for which she received an Academy Award nomination. She played the beloved Queen Ramonda in Marvel Studios’ Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, for which she recently won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. She recently wrapped production on the Netflix Originals feature film, Damsel, opposite Millie Bobby Brown.
Her other notable film roles were in Mission: Impossible–Fallout, Malcolm X, Notorious, Green Lantern, Waiting to Exhale, Contact, Music of the Heart, Bumble Bee, Olympus Has Fallen, and London Has Fallen, among many others.
Bassett is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Golden Globe Awards, in addition to nominations for an Academy Award and seven Primetime Emmy Awards, and is the recipient of two SAG Awards, 11 NAACP Image Awards, a coveted star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a Black Girls Rock! Icon Award. She was also nominated for a Directors Guild of America Award for her directorial debut of the Whitney Houston biopic Whitney and directed episodes in the popular horror anthology series American Horror Story.
Other recent projects include Disney/Pixar’s Academy Award-winning animated feature Soul, for which she lent her melodious voice for the character, Dorothea Williams; feature films Otherhood and Gunpowder Milkshake from Netflix; and The Flood from National Geographic, for which she received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Narrator. Bassett was also nominated for two Emmys for performances in The Imagineering Story: The Happiest Place on Earth and for A Black Lady Sketch Show. Additional credits include The Rosa Parks Story, American Horror Story and Master of None. Bassett began producing and starring as an LAPD patrol sergeant in the drama series 9-1-1.
Apple Original Films announced the documentary feature, Number One on the Call Sheet: Black Leading Women in Hollywood, to be directed by Shola Lynch with Bassett and Halle Berry on board as executive producers and will debut globally on AppleTV+.
She was recently honored by Glamour’s Women of the Year Awards and received a Critics Choice Documentary Award for Best Narration of Good Night Oppy and the Critics Choice Celebration of Black Cinema & Television Career Achievement Award.
Basset and her husband, Courtney B. Vance, are the principals of their production company, Bassett Vance Productions, which has a partnership with Paramount’s MTV Entertainment Group’s development program for BIPOC and women filmmakers. Their first project One Thousand Years of Slavery aired in February 2022 on the Smithsonian Channel.
The 10th Anniversary MUAHS Awards will be hosted by Melissa Peterman. As previously announced, Oscar and Emmy-winning make-up artist Steve La Porte (Beetlejuice, Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock, and Terminator 2 & 3), and Emmy-winning hair stylist Josée Normand (Star Trek: Voyager, Die Hard and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl), will receive Lifetime Achievement Awards. Emmy-winning make-up artist Fred C. Blau Jr. (The Illustrated Man, Tattoo, Apocalypse Now, and Planet of the Apes) joins Emmy-winning hair stylist Judy Crown (Seinfeld, Houdini, Geppetto, Murphy Brown, and Moonlighting) as recipients of the Vanguard Awards.
Returning as producers of this year’s MUAHS Awards are IngleDodd Media and Erick Weiss of Honeysweet Creative.
