Chadwick Boseman, actor who shone in the groundbreaking superhero film Black Panther – obituary

Chadwick Boseman, who has died from cancer aged 43, was an American actor whose training included a summer course at Balliol College, Oxford, before he struck a blow for racial equality by starring in Hollywood blockbusters as Marvel Comics’ groundbreaking superhero, Black Panther.

“It’s a sea-change moment,” Boseman said when Black Panther was released in 2018. “I still remember the excitement people had seeing Malcolm X – and this is greater, because it includes other people, too. Everybody comes to see the Marvel movie…”

“I truly believe there’s a truth that needs to enter the world at a particular time – and that’s why people are excited about Panther. This is the time.”

Black Panther was culturally remarkable in a number of ways. Featuring a predominantly black cast, it brought into the mainstream the “Afrofuturist” aesthetic of science fiction and fantasy grounded in the cultures of African countries; and it earned more at the box office than any other film from an African-American director (Ryan Coogler). It was also the first superhero film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

Writing in The Telegraph Robbie Collin hailed the film as a “fresh perspective on a well-worn format… [It] walks into the multiplex like it’s insane that it hasn’t been allowed in there all along. And it is… An entire subset of younger cinema-goers are only just about to experience the dizzy uplift of watching a title character in a superhero movie who looks like them under the costume.”

Boseman had first played T’Challa, the benevolent young king of the fictional African nation of Wakanda, and his alter-ego, Black Panther, a superhuman warrior protecting his people’s future, in Captain America: Civil War.

His role was one of a dozen superheroes in that 2016 Marvel film, from Captain America himself (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) to Spider-Man (Tom Holland) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson).

More significantly, it was the first movie to feature Black Panther, 50 years after the superhero was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and Boseman depicted with passionate conviction his character’s anger over injustices to his family and country.

He returned to the role for two more Marvel Avengers movies, Infinity War (2018) and Endgame (2019), but believed that Black Panther particularly had had a positive effect for black actors.

“I’ve noticed change,” he said last year. “I’ve seen a willingness of production companies and studios to [do black] castings in a way that they wouldn’t normally do. Audiences want to see difference. They want to see variety and a world that reflects them.”

Boseman had earlier gained a reputation for convincing portrayals of real-life black heroes. In the 2013 film 42, he starred as Jackie Robinson, the first black American to play Major League Baseball (he wore the jersey number 42), facing racism after being signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Boseman had experience of playing in Little League baseball at his South Carolina high school (though basketball was his passion) and needed only a few months’ training.

Then came the explosive biopic Get on Up (2014), Boseman’s brutally honest, electrifying rendering of the legendary funk-soul singer James Brown’s frenzied life: he is seen bullying his backing musicians, going through relationships with a string of women, having flashbacks to a traumatic childhood; Boseman brilliantly lip-synchs to the original recordings and recreates his distinctive dance moves.

The trade magazine Variety observed that the film showcased the actor “in full bloom… burrowing deep into the performer’s tortured, little-boy-lost soul”.

Boseman was a riveting, quietly powerful screen presence in the role of the crusading lawyer Thurgood Marshall in the courtroom drama Marshall (2017), focusing on the character as a young man, defending a black chauffeur accused of the rape and attempted murder of his employer, a white society woman.

He had no qualms about not resembling Marshall physically. “Each movie you want to do about a real person, it’s about a painting,” he explained. “You choose certain things in the painting you want to pull out and show. For this one, it was the spirit of the man – he lives hard, he works hard, he fights hard.”

The actor’s own life began as Chadwick Aaron Boseman, in Anderson, South Carolina, on November 29 1976, the son of Leroy, who ran an upholstery business, and Carolyn (née Mattress), a nurse, and his family had roots in Sierra Leone and Nigeria.

With an ambition to become a painter or an architect, he took art classes during summer holidays.

On leaving T L Hanna High School, he studied directing at Howard University, Washington. Before graduating in 2000, he was one of nine students funded by Denzel Washington to attend a summer acting programme in Oxford.

Boseman spent time writing and directing plays for theatre companies until switching to acting.

He had one-off parts on television in series such as Law & Order (in 2004), CSI: NY (2006) and ER (2008), then landed the regular roles of Nate Ray in Lincoln Heights (2009) and Graham McNair in Persons Unknown (2010).

His film breakthrough came in 42. Playing the Black Panther in four Marvel movies brought him a more mainstream role in 21 Bridges last year as Andre Davis, an NYPD detective on the trail of two police-killers, and a credit as co-producer.

This summer he received critical plaudits for playing the leader of the Bloods, a group of black American soldiers in the Vietnam War, in Spike Lee’s film released through Netflix, Da 5 Bloods.

Boseman was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2016 but he did not reveal this publicly while continuing to work as his career soared to greater heights.

He never achieved his ambition to play Jimi Hendrix.

Boseman married, in 2019, the singer Taylor Simone Ledward, who survives him.

Chadwick Boseman, born November 29 1976, died August 28 2020