Early life
- Born in the family of Carolyn (Mattress) and Leroy Boseman.
- In his youth, Boseman practiced martial arts, and continued this training as an adult.
- As a child, he wanted to become an architect.
Education
- Boseman graduated from T. L. Hanna High School, where he played on the basketball team.
- In his junior year, he wrote his first play, Crossroads, and staged it at the school after a classmate was shot and killed.
- He was recruited to play basketball at college but chose the arts instead, attending college at Howard University in Washington, D.C. and graduating in 2000 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in directing.
1993–2007: Theater, Deep Azure, and early television
- In 2000, he was named a Drama League Directing Fellow.
- He directed productions including George C. Wolfe's The Colored Museum and a staging of Amiri Baraka's Dutchman.
- He worked as the drama instructor in the Schomburg Junior Scholars Program, housed at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem between 2002 and 2009.
- He rose to prominence as a playwright and stage actor in 2002, performing in multiple productions and winning an AUDELCO award in 2002 for his part in Ron Milner's Urban Transitions.
- As a member of the National Shakespeare Company of New York, he played Romeo in Romeo and Juliet and Malcolm in Macbeth.
- He directed and wrote plays as part of the Hip-hop theater movement
- In 2003, Boseman was cast in his first television role, an episode of Third Watch, and began playing Reggie Montgomery in the daytime soap opera All My Children.
- His best-known play, Deep Azure, was commissioned in 2004 by the Congo Square Theatre Company in Chicago. It was nominated for a 2006 Jeff Award for Best New Work.
- In 2008, Boseman turned Deep Azure into a screenplay.
- He also directed, wrote, and produced the short film Blood Over a Broken Pawn in 2007, which was honored at the 2008 Hollywood Black Film Festival.
2008–2015: Breakthrough with 42 and Get on Up
- In 2008, Boseman moved to Los Angeles to pursue his acting career. This year he had a recurring role on the television series Lincoln Heights.
- He also appeared in his first feature film in 2008, The Express: The Ernie Davis Story.
- In July 2013, Boseman's second short film as director, Heaven, premiered at the HollyShorts Film Festival.
- Boseman's breakthrough role came in 2013 with the film 42, in which he portrayed the lead role of baseball legend Jackie Robinson.
- In 2014, Boseman starred in another sporting film, Draft Day.
- He had workshopped the Tupac Shakur jukebox musical Holler If Ya Hear Me in 2013, but did not continue to Broadway with it in order to take the role of James Brown in 2014's Get on Up.
- Boseman had sold a thriller screenplay to Universal Pictures in 2014, which he continued to collaborate on with creative partner Logan Coles.
- In 2016, he starred as Thoth, a deity from Egyptian mythology, in Gods of Egypt.
2016–2019: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marshall and 21 Bridges
- In 2016, Boseman began portraying the Marvel Comics character T'Challa / Black Panther in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Captain America: Civil War was his first film in a five-picture deal with Marvel Entertainment.
- Boseman returned as the Black Panther in 2018, in the Black Panther movie, which focused on the character and his home country of Wakanda in Africa. The film opened to great anticipation, becoming one of the highest-grossing films. The role earned Boseman a spot on the 2018 Time 100 as one of the world's most influential people, with Sean Combs writing his entry.
- He reprised the role in both Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, which were released in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Both films were the highest grossing of the year they were released, with Endgame going on to become the highest-grossing film of all time.
- Boseman portrayed Thurgood Marshall in the biographical film Marshall in 2017.
- In 2019, he starred in 21 Bridges, an American action thriller film directed by Brian Kirk, as an NYPD detective who shuts down the eponymous twenty-one bridges of Manhattan to find two suspected cop killers.
2020: Da 5 Bloods and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
- In 2019 Boseman was announced as part of the cast for the Netflix films Da 5 Bloods, directed by Spike Lee, and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, directed by George C. Wolfe. Da 5 Bloods was released on June 12, 2020.
- The film Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, in which Boseman co-stars as trumpeter Levee, was released after the actor's death in 2020.
Illness and death
- Boseman was diagnosed with stage III colon cancer in 2016, which eventually progressed to stage IV before 2020.
- During treatment, involving multiple surgeries and chemotherapy, he continued to work and completed production for several films, including Marshall, Da 5 Bloods, Ma Rainey, and others.
- Boseman died at his home as a result of complications related to colon cancer on August 28, 2020, with his wife and family by his side.
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