When Chadwick Boseman died on August 28, at age forty-three, after suffering from colon cancer for four years without disclosing it publicly, everyone seemed to have the same initial reactions: “He was so young!” and “It’s incredible he could’ve given those performances while suffering from cancer!”

Since 2016, Boseman played, among other roles, the demanding part of Thurgood Marshall in Marshall (2017); the role that vaulted him to international stardom, T’Challa, ruler of the fictional African nation of Wakanda in Black Panther (2018); and the male lead opposite Viola Davis in the completed but not yet released film adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Immediately before that, he played Jackie Robinson in 42 (2013) and James Brown in Get on Up (2014). He looked remarkably athletic even by Hollywood standards of muscle definition for male stars.

Boseman’s decision to keep his illness completely private was both brave and practical, in a climb to stardom built on playing heroic fictional characters as well as justly legendary historical figures who achieved extraordinary things in grim circumstances. As Spike Lee put it when casting Boseman as the admired squad leader Stormin’ Norman in his Vietnam film Da 5 Bloods (2020),