Actor: Chadwick Boseman

Chadwick Boseman played Jackie Robinson, James Brown and Thurgood Marshall in three years, which is an unusual concentration of historical biography.

Black Panther made him globally famous and T’Challa carried a cultural weight beyond the film itself, which he handled with a seriousness that was widely noted at the time.

He was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2016 and made every subsequent film, including four Marvel entries and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, while undergoing treatment without disclosing it. He was nominated posthumously and died in 2020 at forty-three.