How Courtney B. Vance and Angela Bassett do marriage like rock stars

While Hollywood couplings aren’t usually made to last, Courtney B. Vance and Angela Bassett have been making marriage work for 25 years. 

While on the red carpet at Sunday night’s Critics Choice Awards, the pair spoke with People about their relationship. As a metaphor for how they keep things rolling, Vance offered: “It’s like a rock band, The Temptations or The Stones or The Eagles.”

He explains, “Initially it was about, ‘They made it,’ and then ‘What about my individual glory?’… And then going, ‘You know what? We’re better together and stronger together.'”

Vance, 52, added, “To see those groups still doing it 30, 40, 50 years later and making even more money is just, it’s a good feeling, the same thing.”

Of course, love has a lot to do with it, but Bassett, 54, also described as keys: “Talking, communicating and allowing each other to have your own space and then come back together.”

The pair are also each other’s biggest fans. “A lot of times you don’t know that it’ll come back around and I’ve been there … letting her know that, just hang in there,” says Emmy winner Vance. 

Hinting at Bassett’s Oscar nomination for 1993’s What’s Love Got to Do With It? and now her march to what most believe will be her first Oscar, for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, he says, “… when it comes around, people know what happened 30 years ago and it didn’t come around for you … they’ve been waiting for a moment like this to lift you up. So it’ll be even bigger now … they want it more than you want it, if that’s possible.”

Bassett, who won the night’s Best Supporting Actress award for the film, says having someone in your corner “makes the success all the more sweeter.”

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