Chadwick Boseman has received a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame five years after his death in 2020. The beloved South Carolina–born actor, best known for his portrayal of Marvel’s Black Panther, worked for two decades in film and television, embodying iconic figures like baseball player Jackie Robinson (42), the “Godfather of Soul” James Brown (Get On Up), and civil rights lawyer and Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall (Marshall).
Boseman’s family, friends, and collaborators attended the unveiling ceremony, including his widow, Simone Ledward Boseman, his brothers, Derrick and Kevin, and fellow actors and filmmakers Michael B. Jordan, Ryan Coogler, and Viola Davis. “I have to believe that Chadwick is still alive. I can’t use the word ‘gone’ or ‘death,’ really,” Davis said in a speech at the event. “This star, as beautiful as it is on the Walk of Fame, shines a whole lot less brighter than Chadwick does in heaven.”
The actor and playwright also starred in TV series like Lincoln Heights and Persons Unknown, and won an Emmy for his voice work in What If…? in 2022. He garnered an Oscar nomination and won a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Critics Choice Award, and a Golden Globe for his role in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. For more on that award-winning turn and for additional Boseman performances you can stream to keep his star shining, see below.
Viola Davis (The Woman King) co-stars with Boseman in this musical homage — an adaptation of legendary playwright August Wilson’s work — to influential blues singer Ma Rainey (Davis). When Rainey and her backup musicians, the Georgia Jazz Band, show up for a recording session in 1920s Chicago, they’re forced to deal with a racist producer and dissent in their own ranks as trumpeter Levee Green (Boseman) demands more recognition, recording time, and money. Glynn Turman (Fargo), Colman Domingo (Rustin), and Michael Potts (The Piano Lesson) co-star. The film marks Boseman’s final onscreen role and is dedicated to his memory.
Boseman leads this revenge thriller about Jacob King, a man from Cape Town, South Africa, who receives a threatening message that his estranged sister (Sibongile Mlambo) is in trouble. He travels to Los Angeles to find and save her — but he’s too late. Instead, he works to avenge her death. Luke Evans (Dracula Untold), Teresa Palmer (A Discovery of Witches), and Alfred Molina (Frida) co-star in this movie that premiered at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival.
During the Vietnam War, a squad of US soldiers who called themselves the Bloods — Paul (Delroy Lindo), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie (Norm Lewis), Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), and Norman (Boseman) — found a stash of gold bars deep in the jungle. They hid the treasure, planning to return for it later, but Norman died in an ensuing firefight. In the present day, the four surviving members of the Bloods return to Vietnam to find the gold and collect Norman’s remains. Jonathan Majors (Devotion), Johnny Trí Nguyễn (The Rebel), Mélanie Thierry (Connemara), Paul Walter Hauser (Black Bird), Jasper Pääkkönen (BlacKkKlansman), and Jean Reno (Léon) co-star in this drama from celebrated director Spike Lee (Highest 2 Lowest, Do the Right Thing).
