When it comes to Angela Bassett, the legendary actress has looked the same for the last 30 years. So when she celebrated her 60th – yes that’s 6-0 – birthday on Aug. 16 it was hard to tell if the bikini photo she shared was taken today, yesterday, or in the 1980s. That’s because the Black Panther star posted an Instagram pic of her looking flawless in a skimpy bikini. As you can see in the snap below, her abs are flat, her arms are toned and her skin hasn’t got a single wrinkle in sight. Miss Angela captioned the photo, “Happy Birthday to all my Leo brothers and sisters. Let’s eat cake!”
Her fans lost their minds when they saw the snap. One person wrote, “And here I am struggling at this age to get my body right…she is beautiful.” Another fan wrote, “Is this you now???????? You NEED to share your genes with me IMMEDIATELY please!!!!!!!” Over on Twitter the reaction was similar. One person tweeted, “Imagine being 60 and this fine. Lawd.” Yet another fan wrote, “Y’all understand #THIS. NO PHOTOSHOP, FILTERS, NOTHIN’. SHE HAS NO MAKE-UP ON.”
Obviously Angela looks amazing, but she has admitted in the past that her age-defying beauty takes work to maintain. “Even though people tell me I’m impervious to aging, I’m not,” she told PEOPLE in a July 2016 interview. “The scale isn’t going down the way it used to. It used to be easier, even as much as a year ago.” As for how she gets those taut abs, her secret is fairly obvious – exercise. She added, “If I can work out for 30 minutes, I feel good. Sometimes I can’t, but [I like] to think, ‘Who can’t do that?’ My philosophy is: Do the best you can and do something that you enjoy. For me, I like free weights.”
Angela – who is married to actor Courtney B. Vance, 58, with whom she has 12-year-old twins Bronwyn and Slater – shares her birthday with another age-defying queen, Madonna, who also turned 60 on Aug. 16. Given that both women still have rock hard bodies, that’s all the motivation we need to dust off our dumbbells and head to the gym. No more excuses!