Courtney B. Vance is discussing his marriage to Angela Bassett.
“Angela and I got engaged on the premiere night of The Preacher’s Wife,” the 63-year-old actor tells PEOPLE magazine this week.
“That was a transitional moment in my life,” the Emmy winner says of Penny Marshall’s 1996 picture, in which he co-starred with Whitney Houston and Denzel Washington.
“I asked her to marry me at the premiere,” Vance recalls of 65-year-old Bassett. On Oct. 12, 1997, the two married less than a year later. “She, Whitney, The Preacher’s Wife, Penny Marshall—the whole [experience] was a turning point in my life.”
Speaking to people about his new book, The Invisible Ache: Black Men Identifying Their Pain and Reclaiming Their Power, co-written with Dr. Robin L. Smith, Vance offers new insight on his and Bassett’s 26-year marriage.
“Everything is about her,” says the People v. O.J. Simpson star. Bassett Vance Productions is the Los Angeles-based couple’s film production firm, and they’re also parents to 17-year-old twins Bronwyn Golden and Slater Josiah.
Vance argues in The Invisible Ache that his collaboration with Bassett, years of treatment, and Christian religion have all played important roles in his mental health journey. His aim to embrace and work through his grief—a process that began with his father’s unexpected suicide in 1990—confronted a snag not long after marrying the Black Panther actress, he reveals in one of the book’s most moving passages.
“We had done nine weeks of premarital counseling,” he explains to people. “I thought I was ready for my soulmate.” However, “marriage is a whole other thing that you have to commit to,” he said. “‘Where two become one’ is a mystery.”
The adjustment to married life was tough, and Vance soon encountered what he describes as “a severe anxiety attack or mental breakdown.” He recalls listening to Bassett confer with physicians while “sitting there, tears streaming down my face, in my hospital bed.”
Vance recounts that it was during that low period that he recognized that Christianity may help him in his search for mental health.
“I read the Bible five times in a row,” he confesses. “I’d gone about as far as I could without reading that book.” I needed to say something now. “I had exhausted all other options.”
Then, according to Vance, “our household was ordered.” Because I was still doing everything, like purchasing groceries and going to the flower store every Tuesday and bringing flowers in and arranging them because I knew she liked fresh flowers!”
“I recognized, thank God, early on—after that epiphany—that everything is about her,” he says of his relationship with Bassett. Once I got into the attitude of shifting, altering, and taking action, I realized that everything was pushing and expanding me in preparation for marriage.”
The message Vance wants readers to take away from The Invisible Ache is to reach out for support and healing, whether to a long-term companion, therapist, or religious leader. And as his own experience has shown him, “your getting help, your admitting your wound is not you, is prepping you for where God’s got you to be in 30 years.”
After nearly 30 years with his wife, he says, “I recognize that everything I had done was in preparation mode for Angela.”