Halle Berry

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Halle Berry once stood at a podium holding an Academy Award in one hand and a Razzie in the other. She had turned up in person to collect the Worst Actress prize for Catwoman, and she took the stage with a laugh. "I never in my life thought that I would be up here, winning a Razzie!" she said. Then she explained why she had come. "When I was a kid, my mother told me that if you could not be a good loser, then there's no way you could be a good winner." It is an unusual scene for any performer, and it fits a career that has swung between the celebrated and the ridiculed. This documentary follows the American actress Halle Berry. How did a pageant contestant from Ohio reach a place where both trophies made sense? What did she have to fight for along the way? And what did she do with the attention once she had it?

  402

• 2. Cleveland Beginnings

  ›

  She was born Maria Halle Berry in Cleveland, Ohio, on the 14th of August 1966. Her name was legally changed to Halle Maria Berry when she was five. Her parents took the middle name from Halle's Department Store, a well-known landmark in the city at the time.

  Her mother, Judith Ann, was a psychiatric nurse. Judith's own mother, Nellie Hawkins, had come from Liverpool. Her father, Jerome Jesse Berry, worked as an attendant in the psychiatric ward of the same hospital and later drove a bus. The couple divorced when Berry was four. She and her older sister, Heidi Berry-Henderson, were raised by their mother alone.

  Berry has described a childhood marked by violence. She has recalled watching her father beat her mother, including once hitting her with a wine bottle. She was also bullied at school, and she says that experience taught her to fight and defend herself. In 1992 she said she did not even know whether her father was still alive. He died in 2003. Years afterward she told Essence magazine: "While I didn't have much of a relationship with him while he was here, as he was alcohol addicted and that addiction robbed us of the relationship we were meant to have, I now understand how much he loved me and how vital he was and is to my life".

  The family lived in Oakwood, Ohio. At Bedford High School, Berry was a cheerleader, an honor student, the editor of the school newspaper and the prom queen. She spent time working in the children's department at Higbee's department store, then studied at Cuyahoga Community College.

  In the 1980s she turned to beauty contests. She won Miss Teen All American in 1985 and Miss Ohio USA in 1986. At the 1986 Miss USA pageant, Christy Fichtner of Texas took the crown and Berry finished as first runner-up. Her interview answer, that she hoped to work as an entertainer or in media, earned the highest score from the judges.

  Later that year she became the first African-American to represent the United States at Miss World. She placed sixth, while Giselle Laronde of Trinidad and Tobago was crowned. Her pageant interview had named a goal, and she had little time to wait before testing it.

  3691216

• 3. New York Climb

  ›

  In 1989, Berry moved to New York City with acting in mind and quickly ran out of money. For a short time she stayed in a homeless shelter and then a YMCA. That same year she appeared in the television series Living Dolls, as Emily Franklin.

  Spike Lee gave her a film debut in Jungle Fever, released in 1991. She played Vivian, a drug addict, in a small part. The same year she had her first co-starring role in Strictly Business. In 1992 came Boomerang, a romantic comedy in which she played a career woman who falls for Eddie Murphy's character.

  The parts that followed were varied. She played a headstrong biracial slave in the television adaptation of Alex Haley's Queen. In the live-action Flintstones film she was Sharon Stone, a sultry secretary who tries to seduce Fred Flintstone. Then she took a heavier turn in Losing Isaiah, in 1995, as a former drug addict fighting to regain custody of her son, opposite Jessica Lange.

  In 1996 she appeared with Kurt Russell in Executive Decision. She also played Sandra Beecher in Race the Sun, a true story shot in Australia. That year she became a spokeswoman for Revlon, and the deal ran for seven years before she renewed it in 2004.

  By 1998 she was drawing real praise. In Bulworth she played an intelligent woman raised by activists who gives a politician, played by Warren Beatty, a fresh start. The same year she played Zola Taylor, one of the three wives of the pop singer Frankie Lymon, in Why Do Fools Fall in Love.

  Her biggest push came with Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, an HBO film from 1999. Dandridge was the first African American woman nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Berry introduced the project, co-produced it and fought hard to get it made. It won her a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. The category that had honored Dandridge's nomination would soon matter to Berry as well.

  4199899

• 4. Oscar Night

  ›

  The role that changed her standing was Leticia Musgrove in Monster's Ball, released in 2001. Leticia is the troubled wife of an executed murderer, who is played by Sean Combs. Berry won the National Board of Review award and the Actor Award for Best Actress for it. Then she won the Academy Award for Best Actress, the first African-American woman to do so.

  The NAACP issued a statement: "Congratulations to Halle Berry and Denzel Washington for giving us hope and making us proud. If this is a sign that Hollywood is finally ready to give opportunity and judge performance based on skill and not on skin color then it is a good thing."

  Not everyone applauded the part itself. The film includes a graphic love scene between her character and a racist character played by Billy Bob Thornton. It prompted plenty of media discussion, and many in the African-American community criticized her for taking the role. Berry answered: "I don't really see a reason to ever go that far again. That was a unique movie. That scene was special and pivotal and needed to be there, and it would be a really special script that would require something like that again."

  Her acceptance speech looked past herself. "This moment is so much bigger than me. This is for every nameless, faceless woman of color who now has a chance tonight because this door has been opened." She honored earlier black actresses who never got the opportunity.

  She also moved quickly on business. She asked Revlon for a higher fee for her advertisements. When the firm's chief, Ron Perelman, congratulated her and said how glad he was that she modeled for the company, she replied, "Of course, you'll have to pay me more." Perelman stalked off in a rage.

  Hollywood adjusted as well. After the win, writers were commissioned to give her more screen time in X2.

  2628172724

• 5. Risks and Reception

  ›

  In 2000, Berry took on the mutant superhero Storm in X-Men. She returned for X2 in 2003, X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006 and X-Men: Days of Future Past in 2014.

  Swordfish, in 2001, included her first topless scene. She first opposed the sunbathing scene, and then agreed. Some people credited a reported extra $500,000 from Warner Bros. for the change. Berry denied it, said the stories amused her, and called them "made for great publicity for the movie." She said her husband at the time, Eric Benét, had encouraged her to take risks.

  In Die Another Day, in 2002, she played the Bond girl Giacinta "Jinx" Johnson. Costume designer Lindy Hemming insisted that she wear a bikini and a knife, as a nod to Dr. No, where Ursula Andress had emerged from the surf 40 years earlier. An ITV news poll voted Jinx the fourth toughest girl on screen of all time. During filming, debris from a smoke grenade flew into Berry's eye, and a 30-minute operation removed it.

  Gothika, opposite Robert Downey, Jr. in November 2003, brought another injury. Downey twisted her arm too hard and broke it, and production stopped for eight weeks. The film took in $60 million in the United States and another $80 million abroad. Limp Bizkit's "Behind Blue Eyes" video, made for the soundtrack, also featured her.

  Catwoman paid her US$12.5 million, and critics widely rank it among the worst films ever made.

  In 2005 she starred in Their Eyes Were Watching God, an Oprah Winfrey-produced ABC adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's novel. It brought her second Primetime Emmy Award nomination. She also voiced Cappy in the animated film Robots.

  Perfect Stranger, from 2007, paired her with Bruce Willis and earned US$73 million worldwide to lukewarm reviews. Things We Lost in the Fire, the same year, was her first film with a female director, Susanne Bier. It made only US$8.6 million, though the Austin Chronicle wrote that "Berry is brilliant here, as good as she's ever been."

  In April 2007 she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6801 Hollywood Boulevard. By the end of the decade she was earning an estimated $10 million per film.

  Frankie and Alice, in 2010, cast her as a woman with dissociative identity disorder. It brought her the African-American Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe nomination. New Year's Eve, in 2011, was panned by critics but earned US$142 million worldwide.

  In Cloud Atlas, in 2012, each actor played six characters across five centuries. With a US$128.8 million budget, it made US$130.4 million. Movie 43 earned a description from the Chicago Sun-Times as "the Citizen Kane of awful." Then came The Call, in 2013, where she played a 9-1-1 operator taking a call from a kidnapped girl. It became a sleeper hit with US$68.6 million worldwide.

  2233384058

• 6. Producer and Director

  ›

  Berry's first big producing credit was as an executive producer on the television film Lackawanna Blues in 2005. She later produced projects in which she also acted, including Frankie & Alice.

  In 2014 she signed on to CBS's Extant as star and co-executive producer. She played Molly Woods, an astronaut who comes home after 13 months in space and struggles to reconnect with her husband and android son. The show ran for two seasons, through 2015, with largely positive reviews. USA Today wrote that she "brings a dignity and gravity to Molly." The same year she launched the production company 606 Films with partner Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, a company that grew out of her deal for the series.

  Kidnap, filmed in 2014, finally reached theaters in 2017. She played a diner waitress chasing the car that carries her son. The film grossed US$34 million to mixed reviews. Kingsman: The Golden Circle followed, in 2017, with Berry as an agent in a secret American spy organisation. Despite mixed reviews, it made US$414 million worldwide.

  She also starred with Daniel Craig in Kings, set during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Variety wrote: "It should be said that Berry has given some of the best and worst performances of the past quarter-century, but this is perhaps the only one that swings to both extremes in the same movie." On the 24th of October 2017 she faced James Corden in the first rap battle of TBS's Drop the Mic.

  In John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum, released on the 17th of May 2019, she played an assassin named Sofia. Earlier that year she became executive producer of the BET series Boomerang, based on the film in which she starred. It premiered on the 12th of February 2019.

  Bruised was her debut as a director. She also played Jackie Justice, a disgraced MMA fighter reconnecting with her estranged son. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2020 and reached Netflix in November 2021.

  In January 2023 she signed with Range Media Partners as a producer and director. She joined the jury for the main competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. In 2026 she starred in the crime thriller Crime 101, opposite Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo.

  6367687682

• 7. Spotlight and Private Life

  ›

  In 2003, People ranked Berry No. 1 on its list of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World, after seven earlier top-ten finishes. FHM also placed her first on its 100 Sexiest Women poll that year. Esquire called her the Sexiest Woman Alive in October 2008. She said: "I don't know exactly what it means, but being 42 and having just had a baby, I think I'll take it." Rapper Hurricane Chris released a song about her in 2009.

  She has described her biracial background as "painful and confusing" when she was young. Early on she decided to identify as a black woman, because she knew that was how others would see her.

  Her personal life drew just as much coverage. She dated Chicago dentist John Ronan from March 1989 to October 1991. In 1993 he sued her for $80,000 in what he called unpaid loans. She said it was a gift, and a judge dismissed the case.

  Berry says an abusive boyfriend beat her during the 1991 filming of The Last Boy Scout, puncturing an eardrum and costing her 80% of the hearing in her left ear. She has never named him.

  She first saw baseball player David Justice on television in February 1992. She married him shortly after midnight on the 1st of January 1993. They separated in February 1996 and divorced on the 20th of June 1997.

  In May 2000, she pleaded no contest to leaving the scene of a car accident. She received three years of probation, a $13,500 fine and 200 hours of community service.

  She married singer-songwriter Eric Benét on the 24th of January 2001. They had separated by October 2003, and the divorce was final on the 3rd of January 2005.

  She began dating model Gabriel Aubry in November 2005, after meeting him at a Versace photoshoot. Their daughter was born in March 2008. After they split, a custody fight began in January 2011 over her wish to move to France, home of actor Olivier Martinez, whom she met while filming Dark Tide in South Africa. A judge denied the move in November 2012, and an amicable agreement came on the 29th of November 2012. In June 2014 a court ordered her to pay Aubry $16,000 a month in child support.

  She and Martinez married in France on the 13th of July 2013, and their son was born that October. They announced their divorce in 2015, and it was finalized in December 2016. In 2020 she began dating musician Van Hunt, and in February 2026 they announced their engagement.

  8788971006

• 8. Causes

  ›

  In 2006, Berry joined Pierce Brosnan, Cindy Crawford, Jane Seymour, Dick Van Dyke, Téa Leoni and Daryl Hannah in fighting a proposed liquefied natural gas facility off the coast of Malibu. "I care about the air we breathe, I care about the marine life and the ecosystem of the ocean," she said. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the Cabrillo Port facility in May 2007. Hasty Pudding Theatricals named her its 2006 Woman of the Year.

  In February 2008 she joined a nearly 2,000-house cellphone-bank campaign for Barack Obama. In April 2013 she appeared in a video for Gucci's Chime for Change campaign, which raises funds and awareness on women's education, health and justice.

  In August 2013 she testified alongside Jennifer Garner before the California State Assembly's Judiciary Committee. They backed a bill to protect celebrities' children from harassment by photographers, which passed in September. It was SB 606, called the Anti-Paparazzi Bill, and Governor Jerry Brown signed it in the fall of 2013. Berry named her production company, 606 Films, after it.

  In May 2024 she supported a bill introduced by Senators Patty Murray and Lisa Murkowski to promote menopause research and education. "I'm in menopause, OK?... The shame has to be taken out of menopause. We have to talk about this very normal part of our life that happens. Our doctors can't even say the word to us, let alone walk us through the journey."

  In 2025 she took that argument into business with Respin Health, an online company on menopause. It offers a social media support group, information, and health coaching with nutritionists and trainers. It also provides telemedicine, including hormone replacement therapy, and sells dietary supplements and sexual aids.

  68