Still in her prime
Dorothy Steel’s mind was made up. She had been acting for a few years and didn’t want to audition for some “comic strip” movie she’d never heard of. And at 91, Steel told herself, there was no way she could learn to speak with the African accent the role required.
In late November 2016, Steel asked her agent to kindly decline the invitation, and went about her day.
When her grandson called, Steel casually mentioned the offer. Niles Wardell, 26, was stunned. This is not just comics, he told his grandmother: This is Black Panther. This is a big deal. When she still wasn’t convinced, he decided to turn the tables on the woman who has been his source of wisdom.
“My grandson said to me, ‘You’re always talking about stepping out on faith. I either want you to man up or shut up,’” Steel recalled, laughing.
Steel got another audition and took the chance. And now millions of people worldwide have seen her in the role of a Merchant Tribe elder in the 14th-highest-grossing movie of all time.
At 92, Steel has become a celebrity in ways she couldn’t have imagined. Anytime she steps outside in her home of College Park, Ga., she is greeted with fans asking for a selfie or autograph.
“Hopefully, somebody who at 55 or 60 has decided, ‘This is all I can do,’ they will realize they have 35 more years to get things together,” Steel said. “Start now. It’s never too late ... Keep your mind open and keep faith in yourself that you can do this thing. All you have to do is step out there.”
Nearly a decade ago, Elaine Jackson met Steel at the Frank Bailey Senior Center in Riverdale, Ga., and was immediately impressed. Jackson, now the centre’s manager, wrote and directed productions there and asked Steel to act the part of a teenager in a series of plays called It’s Christmas. During rehearsals, Steel ad libbed and had people hunched over in laughter.
At 89, Steel got an agent and began acting in television shows and commercials. She has made multiple appearances on the soap opera Saints & Sinners, broadcast on U.S. network Bounce TV.
“I always told her she should be in movies,” Jackson said. “Just because of her personality and in the way she portrays her characters. Everything we gave her to do, she just became that particular character.”
Steel poured this same passion into her character for Black Panther. She listened to Nelson Mandela speeches on YouTube for several hours a day and immersed herself into the character.
An hour after seeing Steel’s audition tape, the Marvel casting producers called her agent, Cindy Butler. Within a day, she had the offer.
“Everyone wanted to be on Black Panther,” Butler said. “I knew it was going to be a black cast. I knew it was going to be major. Once she realized what was going on, I knew it was going to be big for her.”
Born and raised in Detroit, Steel worked for the IRS for decades before retiring in 1984. She also lived in the Virgin Islands for 20 years before moving to Georgia to be closer to her son and grandson.
She never thought of acting as a career. But from a young age, Steel enjoyed escaping into the makebelieve worlds of her books, something that acting allows as well.
“I can be whatever it is I’m supposed to be at the time,” she said. “I love it ... While you’re acting, you’re in this protected cubicle that people call the stage. You’re protected from the world. And that’s the first time in my life I felt absolutely secure ... You can just be whatever it is the character is supposed to be.”