15 Black Actors Who Deserved Better Recognition

To look at the career of celebrated actress Angela Bassett is to see a true story of Black excellence and success in the heavyweight world of Hollywood. Still, if you look a little closer you’ll see that even with hundreds of nominations to her name, a talent of her caliber deserved way more accolades when it comes to wins.

Many of us would agree that her unforgettable performance in What’s Love Got to Do with It, the 1993 Tina Turner biopic that garnered her an Oscar nomination, was more than deserving of the big win. With respect to Holly Hunter’s performance in The Piano, the Academy didn’t quite see it that way. To make matters worse, Bassett recently revealed in an interview with ABC’s Linsey Davis that she found difficulty in picking up a follow-up job for over a year due to lack of roles at the time for women of color.

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Bassett’s career spans a whopping four decades between television, film and even theater. With that said, in addition to the aforementioned “Best Actress” nomination in 1994, she has only one other to her name that arrived only three years ago for “Best Supporting Actress” in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever; in similar fashion, she lost out to Jamie Lee Curtis. Outside of the obvious cultural contrast, it’s easy to see the differences when comparing their trajectories in the game as women of the same age. Yet and still, Bassett is a success story compared to how other Black Hollywood stars have been treated over time.

For as much depth, originality and authenticity that Black performers bring to the characters they portray, the recognition in accolades isn’t always comparable to the hustle they put in. It’s mind-boggling to think of where some of the unsung stars of past and present would be if given more attention through major awards, leading roles and high-profile projects that showcased the full range of their abilities. Hollywood has definitely made progress toward greater representation, but we can’t help but consider the ones who deserved better along the way.

Take a look below at a list of Black Hollywood stars from past and present who we feel deserved better treatment when it comes to roles, awards and overall recognition:

Dorothy Dandridge (1922 – 1965)

She broke barriers in Black Hollywood as the first African American to be nominated for a “Best Actress” Oscar. However, years of unfair treatment led to a decline in popularity and bankruptcy that led her to making ends meet as a lounge act in Las Vegas only a year before her death at 42 in 1965.