Chadwick Boseman, the actor who died Friday at 43, made his mark as a Hollywood leading man in just seven short years. After appearing regularly on series television in one-off and recurring roles, his big-screen breakthrough as Jackie Robinson in the 2013 biopic “42” started a remarkable run of iconic Black characters — real ones like Robinson, Thurgood Marshall and James Brown, and imaginary ones like his best-known, Black Panther. Explaining how he humanized these heroes, he told The Times’s Reggie Ugwu last year: “You have to hold it all in your mind, scene by scene. You’re a strong Black man in a world that conflicts with that strength, that really doesn’t want you to be great. So what makes you the one who’s going to stand tall?”

Source: New York Times August 29, 2020 05:37 UTC