Chadwick Boseman’s Life Advice Will Leave You SPEECHLESS
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Chadwick Aaron Boseman (November 29, 1976– August 28, 2020) was an American actor and playwright. After studying directing at Howard University, he began working consistently as a writer, director, and actor for the stage, winning a Drama League Directing Fellowship and an acting AUDELCO, and being nominated for a Jeff Award as a playwright for Deep Azure.
Transitioning to the screen, he landed his first major role as a series regular on Persons Unknown in 2010, and his breakthrough performance came in 2013 as baseball player Jackie Robinson in the biographical film 42. He continued to portray historical figures, starring as singer James Brown in Get on Up (2014), and as lawyer and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in Marshall (2017).
Boseman achieved international fame for playing the superhero Black Panther in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) from 2016 to 2019. He appeared in four MCU films, including an eponymous 2018 film that earned him an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. As the first black actor to headline an MCU film, he was also named in the 2018 Time 100.
In 2016, Boseman was diagnosed with colon cancer. He kept his condition private, continuing to act while also extensively supporting cancer charities until his death in 2020 from the illness. His final film, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, was released posthumously the same year to critical acclaim, earning him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama.
Boseman also received four nominations at the 27th Screen Actors Guild Awards for his work in Da 5 Bloods and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the most for a performer at a single ceremony, winning Male Actor in a Leading Role for Ma Rainey.
According to film critic Owen Gleiberman of Variety, “Boseman was a virtuoso actor who had the rare ability to create a character from the outside in and the inside out [and he] knew how to fuse with a role, etching it in three dimensions That’s what made him an artist, and a movie star, too.
Yet in Black Panther, he also became that rare thing, a culture hero”. Similarly, reviewer Richard Brody in The New Yorker finds the originality of Boseman’s formidable acting technique in his ability to empathize with the interior lives of his characters and render them on screen as fully and completely belonging to the character. He was uniquely able to capture and portray the dignity of his Peter Bradshaw wrote of the actor’s “beauty, his grace, his style, his presence. These made up Chadwick Boseman’s persona [and he became] the lost prince of American cinemaglorious and inspirational”.
Philanthropy
Outside of performing, Boseman supported various charities. He worked with cancer charities including St. Jude’s Hospital, continuing to support those battling the disease up until his own death from it; in a message to a producer days before he died,
Boseman inquired about sending gifts to childhood cancer patients. He donated $10,000 to the Boys and Girls Club of Harlem to provide free tickets for children who wanted to see Black Panther; he did this to support and promote the Black Panther Challenge started by a New Yorker to raise money for similar children across the country. In response, Disney donated $1 million to the Boys & Girls Clubs to advance its STEM programs.
In April 2020, he donated $4.2 million in personal protective equipment to hospitals fighting the COVID-19 pandemic in black communities, starting his own Operation 42 challenge to encourage others to donate PPE.
Advocacy
In politics, Boseman supported the When We All Vote campaign, and his last tweet before his death was congratulating Kamala Harris on her selection as Joe Biden’s vice-presidential nominee. Except from Wikipedia
