Maya Angelou and Jean Seberg were just some of the women who faced everything from racism and sexism to transphobia, yet produced some of cinema’s most defining pictures

It’s got orgies, arrests, scandals and eccentrics. But is the central story – about gay and black people triumphing in 1940s Tinseltown – realistic? We sift the ugly facts from glossy fiction

The star of The Wire and Treme on his new musical about the American singer, actor and activist – and his ‘surf noir’ project with Hugh Laurie