What's Luck Got to Do with It?

Longevity in Hollywood can be elusive unless you're Angela Bassett. With a smart new series that puts her in the Oval Office and a summer blockbuster on the horizon, she delivers a master class in both elegance and endurance.

- MICHAEL CALLAHAN

It's not so simple to begin an interview with Angela Bassett, who has been a movie star for many years and has three degrees from Yale and a million magazine profiles under her belt. So I kick things off with something obvious: How, in an industry where a career can be measured in days, has she managed to build one that has lasted decades?

Those deep mahogany eyes flicker, blazing and direct, like headlights suddenly turning on. "Oh my gosh," she says, her mouth slowly creeping into a wry smile. "You should have asked me how to solve world hunger."

We're sitting on the terrace of the Langham Huntington in Pasadena, the kind of grand hotel where a century ago women in silk stockings and cloche hats went for tea. The terrace overlooks the pool, which, with its green and white striped umbrellas, gives the whole scene a slight Tender Is the Night vibe.

Bassett wears a fitted navy bolero jacket over a white tank, designer jeans with rips in all the right places, and tasteful gold jewelry. Her hair is a wild mane of curls, her skin dewy and flawless; she is 66 and looks 20 years younger. But it's that legendary gaze-wide, piercing, intense-that draws you in.

While her enduring presence in the zeitgeist may be a mystery to her, it shouldn't be to anyone else. The determined daughter of a single mother, Bassett, who was born in New York City and raised in St. Petersburg, Florida, had instilled in her early on the belief that she could, would, and in fact must transcend her modest beginnings to achieve something great. To be somebody.