On August 28th, Chadwick Boseman, the actor who was most famous for his portrayal of Black Panther, passed from colon cancer. He had been battling cancer since 2016 but had kept it quiet up until his death. He was only 43 years old.
Boseman was born in Anderson, South Carolina. While in high school, he wrote his first play. After graduating, he attended Howard University in Washington D.C., where he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in directing.
In those four years that he had been battling cancer, he filmed four Marvel movies alone (including Black Panther), on top of multiple others.
He is also well known for his portrayal of baseball player Jackie Robinson, in the movie 42, singer James Brown in Get on Up, and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in Marshall. With each of these roles in historical films, Boseman was unknowingly making history.
His most well-known role was T’Challa – aka Black Panther. He was the first black actor to headline a Marvel Cinematic Universe film and Black Panther was one of the first few movies to feature a predominantly black cast. He quickly gained international fame and became a role model for younger generations who finally had a superhero that looked like them.
He was nominated for several awards and won a Screen Actors Guild Award, NAACP Image Award, and 2 MTV Movie Awards for Black Panther, one of those awards being “Best Performance in a Movie.”
He also had roles in many TV shows such as Law and Order, CSI:NY, and ER, among others.
Boseman was an inspiration to many, on-screen and off. He will certainly be missed.