Angela Bassett Parents: Meet Betty Jane Bassett & Daniel Benjamin Basset

Angela Bassett is the daughter of a social worker Betty Jane, a civil servant and Daniel Benjamin Basset, a preacher’s son.

Ten months after Bassett was born, her mother became pregnant and had a second child, Bassett’s sister, D’nette. Bassett said the pregnancy only made things harder, leading her parents to send her to her father’s sister, Golden in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

While her aunt did not have any children of her own, she loved children and she was good with them.

At the age of 4, she was picked up by her mother after her parents divorced and then relocated with her sister to St. Petersburg, Florida. Bassett did not see her father again for several years until she attended her grandmother’s funeral.

Bassett is a Golden Globe-winning performer who rose to fame playing outstanding African-American social figures like Katherine Jackson in the television mini-series, The Jacksons: An American Dream.