Chadwick Boseman

Chadwick Aaron Boseman was an American actor and playwright whose two-decade career spanned theater, independent films, and major screen blockbusters. He gained widespread recognition for portraying key historical figures in biographical dramas and for starring as the Marvel Comics superhero T'Challa, also known as Black Panther, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Over the course of his career, Boseman earned numerous accolades, including a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award, alongside nominations for an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award.

Boseman was born on November 29, 1976, in Anderson, South Carolina, where he was raised. He attended T. L. Hanna High School, where he played basketball and wrote his first play, Crossroads. Choosing to pursue the arts over college athletics, he attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., graduating in 2000 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in directing. During his college years, he attended the Oxford Summer Program of the British American Drama Academy in England and later completed additional coursework at the Digital Film Academy in New York City.

At the start of his career in New York, Boseman worked as a theater actor, playwright, and director, while also teaching as a drama instructor in Harlem. In 2000, he was named a Drama League Directing Fellow, and in 2002 he won an AUDELCO award for his stage acting. He wrote and directed several works within the Hip-hop theater movement, including Rhyme Deferred and Hieroglyphic Graffiti. His 2004 play Deep Azure was nominated for a Jeff Award for Best New Work. Boseman transitioned to screen acting with television roles in series such as Third Watch, All My Children, Persons Unknown, and Lincoln Heights.

Boseman achieved his film breakthrough in 2013 playing baseball icon Jackie Robinson in 42. He followed this performance by starring as football player Vontae Mack in Draft Day (2014) and portraying musician James Brown in Get on Up (2014), performing his own dancing for the role. He later played the Egyptian deity Thoth in Gods of Egypt (2016) and attorney Thurgood Marshall in the 2017 biographical drama Marshall.

Boseman attained international fame playing T'Challa across four films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe from 2016 to 2019, including Black Panther (2018). As the first Black actor to headline a Marvel Cinematic Universe film, he was named to the Time 100 list in 2018. His final voice work as the character in the animated series What If...? earned him a posthumous Primetime Emmy Award.

In 2016, Boseman was diagnosed with colon cancer. He kept his illness private and continued working on film projects throughout his treatment until his death on August 28, 2020. For his final film performance in the 2020 drama Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, he received posthumous Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards, as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.