Face-to-Face with Angela Bassett...

When Angela Bassett lights her cheatin' husband's clothes on fire in "Waiting to Exhale," audiences cheered. Her performance as Tina Turner in "What's Love Got to Do With It" won her the Golden Globe. But my favorite role of Angela's was as Stella in "How Stella Got Her Groove Back." The fact that a young and hot Taye Diggs played her young lover was just gravy. Angela is dope! (I've been wanting to say that about someone for the longest time).

Here is my newspaper column, published today, about this stunning actress:

This sounds like a dream come true for any television show: Angela Bassett is checking into NBC's "ER" this fall for what is expected to be the long-running medical drama's last season.

Angela, the Oscar-nominated star of "What's Love Got to Do with It" and such films as "Waiting to Exhale," "How Stella Got Her Groove Back," "Strange Days," and this year's "Meet the Browns," had two good reasons for accepting her first regular series gig: son Slater Josiah and daughter Bronwyn Golden, twins born on Jan. 27, 2006.

"I'm a mom now and (the set is) 15 minutes from our house, so that went into it," she said when we chatted last week. "And they promised me a great role, to work me hard, to get me wonderful, complicated stuff to do. I'm always looking for that opportunity to grow and to stretch."

Angela, who has been married to actor Courtney B. Vance for 11 years, will portray the hospital's new emergency room chief Dr. Cate Banfield.

"They've upheld the standard of excellence for 15 years," she said of the show. "I thought it would be a great company to be associated with and be a part of. It's the final year, so out with a bang."

I spoke with Angela at a brunch in Denver during the Democratic National Convention that celebrated the screening of "Gospel Hill," a film directed by Giancarlo Esposito.

"Gospel" is set in a black neighborhood where race relations are strained when residents are being forced out of their homes to make way for a multimillion-dollar golf course development.

Angela plays a woman who works to expose the profiteering of a black community leader (Esposito) who supports the project. She pushes to get her husband (Danny Glover) involved, which is a challenge because he withdrew from the community after his brother, a civil-rights leader, was assassinated three decades earlier.

"I loved the opportunity to play against Danny and to play a mature, grounded, driven, passionate, on-fire female. I was really impressed," she said. "It was a great, great time."

She was still feeling emotional after the film's screening in Denver the night before: "The way the audience responded to it - words like `divine' and `perfect' and `it had me in tears.' It was great. It's such a labor of love."