THE PERFORMANCE

Given the power of some of Angela Bassett’s on-screen personas -- who can forget her as Tina Turner in “What’s Love Got to Do With It”? -- it would be understandable to envision her as a tall, serious, maybe even intimidating woman. So when she enters a small Montrose cafe to discuss her latest project, writer-director Tyler Perry’s “Meet the Browns,” it’s almost shocking to see how petite she is (just shy of 5 feet 4) and that she’s dressed casually in jeans and a baseball cap with a warm smile on her face.

It brings home how much authority she puts into her performances.

As Brenda, a poor and single mother raising her three children in the projects of Chicago in “Meet the Browns,” she brings personal experience to the role. “I know that woman,” she says. “That woman is my mom, a single mom raising my sister and I in the projects really trying to make ends meet, so I know her intimately.”

Brenda is a woman struggling on her own, proud and resistant to letting others into her life. “I think she’s just a fallible human being, a woman who has made some tremendous mistakes but she is willing to take responsibility for them, but she’s up against enormous obstacles and odds because of them,” Bassett says. “I believe there’s enormous strength in a person who is able to show their vulnerabilities and still get up every day and get dressed, wash your face and put one foot in front of the other. To be able to admit where you’re weak projects a lot of strength.”

When Brenda goes to Georgia to attend the funeral of the father she never knew, she meets a whole new side of the family and eventually learns to trust others and ask for help.

In addition to what she calls the “wild, crazy world of Tyler Perry,” the 49-year-old actress was drawn to the humor of the film. “This is comedy,” she says, “extremely broad comedy, and I come from this dramatic background. People consider me to be a serious person and a dramatic actress so, with this film, I was hoping those worlds would mesh together in a cohesive way.”

“People like her come along once in a lifetime,” says Perry by phone. “And we are very fortunate to share the planet at the same time that she’s here to get to see her work. I’ve always wanted to work with her for a very long time. For her to say yes really moved me.”

Being a mom (with her actor husband Courtney B. Vance) of 2-year-old twins, playing a mother came naturally to Bassett. “I love young people,” she says. “It wasn’t a stretch. That baby girl who played my daughter would come into the makeup trailer and she would look at me and say, ‘I’m watching Mommy.’ It was such a gift to be given from them that they would really play with you, understand and accept you that way.”

Bassett stresses the importance of being able to use her art as a bridge to greater understanding in the world. “This film is an opportunity to give voice to those who have come from where I come from and those who’ve stayed where I come from, to give voice to certain sectors in this film, single moms who are making it and those who are trying to make it and keep it together,” she says.

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Where you’ve seen her

A Yale School of Drama graduate, Angela Bassett began her acting career in the theater. She later appeared in such TV fare as “The Cosby Show” and “thirtysomething.” Her breakout role was in 1993’s Tina Turner biopic “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” in which she starred with Laurence Fishburne. She also had leading roles in “Malcolm X,” “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” and “Waiting to Exhale.” She’ll be seen next as Voletta Wallace, the mother of slain rapper Notorious B.I.G. in the upcoming film “Notorious,” which starts shooting in New York in two weeks