Halle Berry

Actor

• Born: August 14, 1966
• Birthplace: Cleveland, Ohio

Actor

Berry made her film debut in 1991 and enjoyed high-profile success. She became the first African American to win an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Monster’s Ball(2001). In 2009, she was one of the film industry’s highest-paid female actors, earning up to fourteen million dollars per film.

Area of achievement: Film: acting

Early Life

Halle Maria Berry was born in 1966 to interracial parents Jerome and Judith Berry. She spent the first years of her life in Cleveland, Ohio. When Berry was four, her father— who struggled with alcoholism and abused his wife and older daughter, Heidi—abandoned the family. Berry’s mother, a registered nurse, moved with her daughters to the suburb of Bedford. In the inner city, race had not been an issue, but the Bedford schools were predominantly White. Berry faced racial taunts from White peers and bullying from Black peers, especially when her White mother attended school events. Despite these challenges, Berry was an engaged student who earned high grades. In high school, she was involved in numerous activities, including cheerleading, editing the school newspaper, and serving as class president. When she was named prom queen, however, the White student body was skeptical about the win, so Berry had to fight to retain the title. She ended up sharing the crown with a White classmate.

After high school, Berry attended Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland to study broadcast journalism. She also competed in beauty pageants, including Miss Teen Ohio and Miss Teen America. In 1985, she was named first runner-up in the Miss USA pageant. She eventually turned her attention to modeling, leaving college before earning a degree.

Life’s Work

Berry’s acting career began in 1989 with a role in the sitcom Living Dolls. Although that show was short lived, a yearlong role on the drama Knots Landing followed in 1991. Berry landed her first film role later in 1991 in Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever. In 1993, critics took notice when she played Alex Haley’s grandmother in the television miniseries Queen. More substantial roles followed; she earned acclaim for the 1995 drama Losing Isaiah, in which she played a mother recovering from drug addiction and trying to regain custody of her son. Berry became the first African American actor to portray the Queen of Sheba in Showtime’s 1995 film Solomon and Sheba.

Berry had an opportunity to address Hollywood’s racial discrimination in the 1999 made-for-television film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, which aired on HBO. Dorothy Dandridge was a Black singer and actor in the 1930s who struggled to land leading roles and died of an overdose of antidepressants in her forties. Despite her struggles, Dandridge was Hollywood’s first African American sex symbol. Berry’s performance won critical plaudits. She received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Miniseries or Made-for-Television Motion Picture.

Berry continued to seek roles that had more depth than the parts typically available to African American female actors. She found such a role in Monster’s Ball in 2001. In the film, Berry portrayed a poor Black waitress and wife of a death-row inmate who has an affair with a racist White prison guard. This performance garnered her a Golden Globe nomination and an Academy Award for Best Actress. She was the first African American to win an Oscar in this category.

In addition to dramatic roles, Berry appeared as a seductress in The Flintstones (1994), in the title role in Catwoman (2004), and as Storm in four X-Men films (2000, 2003, 2006, and 2014). She played a Bond girl in the 2002 bond film, Die Another Day. In 2004 she was chosen to play Catwoman in the much-maligned movie of the same name. In 2007, she starred in Perfect Stranger and Things We Lost in the Fire. She was awarded a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame in November 2007. Her performance in 2010's Frankie and Alice earned her another Golden Globe nomination, and she also had major roles in Cloud Atlas (2012) and John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum (2019). Bruised (2020), in which Berry both starred and made her directorial debut, was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival.

During the mid-to-late 2010s, Berry also returned to television, starring in the CBS science-fiction drama Extant (2014–15), which she also coproduced, and serving as a showrunner for Boomerang (2019–20).

Thrice divorced, Berry gave birth to a daughter, Nahla Ariela Aubry, in 2008 with French Canadian model Gabriel Aubry. In 2013 she gave birth to a son, Maceo, with third husband Olivier Martinez. She spent a number of years as a spokesperson for Revlon cosmetics and released a signature fragrance, Halle by Halle Berry, in 2009.

In addition to her stature as an actor, Berry is well known for her beauty. At age forty-two, she was voted Sexiest Woman Alive by Esquire magazine. She also is involved in campaigns against violence, guns, and drugs, and in support of victims of domestic violence. She received the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award in 2009 for these endeavors.

Significance

Berry’s talent and beauty helped her achieve many major firsts for African American actors. Defying racial barriers in Hollywood, she paved the way for less stereotypical roles for Black women and brought attention to social issues facing African Americans.

Bibliography

Farley, Christopher John. Introducing Halle Berry. Pocket Books, 2002.

John, Melissa Ewey. Halle Berry. Greenwood, 2010.

Setoodeh, Ramin. “Halle Berry’s ‘Bruised’: How She Fought Her Way to Director’s Chair.” Variety, 9 Sept. 2020, variety.com/2020/film/news/halle-berry-bruised-directing-toronto-film-festival-1234762255/. Accessed 16 July 2021.‌