Fresh Faces

Talent's Got Something to Do With It
Jan. 31, 1992 - Three years ago, ''God bless you real good'' was the message on the answering machine of Angela Bassett, whose small role as a long-suffering mother in John Singleton's Boyz N the Hood had convinced Spike Lee to cast her in Malcolm X. Bassett said of playing Malcolm's wife, Betty Shabazz, ''It takes a lot of prayer and concentration to open your heart to that kind of heartbreak.'' Two years later, the Yale-trained Bassett pumped up and hit the stage with a performance that earned her a Best Actress Oscar nomination, playing another long-suffering woman, Tina Turner, in What's Love Got to Do With It.

Grant Applies for Stardom
May 10, 1991 - You wonder how he went unnoticed for so long. But back then, it was often hard to find Hugh Grant in his roles. As Chopin in Impromptu, he hid under a ''12-year-old girl's wig,'' as he called it. And as a man whose lover had AIDS in the ABC-TV movie Our Sons, he disappeared behind a preppy East Coast dialect. So when he finally played, well, himself in Four Weddings and a Funeral, it was a revelation: the shock of the Hugh.

Tupac's Real Life Rap
Feb. 7, 1992 - ''I've got that survival instinct and the ambition to make it by any means necessary,'' Tupac Shakur asserted at age 20, enjoying his screen debut as a violent teenager in Juice and the rise of his first solo album, 2pacalypse Now, on the Billboard charts. But the nascent actor's need to retain street credibility had its price: He reportedly lost his chance at the role of Malik in John Singleton's Higher Learning due to his legal problems. Last November he was shot five times by an unidentified assailant, and this month he was sentenced to 1 1/2 to 4 1/2 years for sexually abusing a woman in his New York hotel room.

Survivors of Seattle
Jan. 31, 1992 - When EW first checked in with Pearl Jam, their debut album, Ten, and tour with the Red Hot Chili Peppers were creating a buzz that they were ''the next Seattle band'' -- next, of course, to Nirvana. ''The fact that Nirvana had a No. 1 record and a No. 6 single is sick,'' band member Jeff Ament said then, ''and beautiful at the same time.''

Rosie the Riveting
April 3, 1992 - Rosie Perez had been discovered by Spike Lee and cast in Do the Right Thing; she continued to win praise as In Living Color's choreographer and was winning points as Woody Harrelson's factoid-obsessed, Jeopardy!-playing girlfriend in White Men Can't Jump. But even those credits weren't enough for Perez, who would admit only to being ''under 25.'' ''I'm very happy with the way things are going for me right now, but I still feel like they're going too slow,'' she said. ''I want it all.'' Two years later, she came close when she garnered an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in Fearless.

Janine, The Head-Turner
May 3, 1991 - She was a former soap star, former model, and Alec Baldwin's former fiancée -- so Janine Turner was happy to come across a fresh role. ''She's got courage, and no pretenses,'' Turner said of her character, Maggie, on CBS' Northern Exposure. ''She is who she is.'' The show was perhaps a little too fresh: Audiences were initially slow to come around, but before long Exposure's ratings headed due north.