Halle Maria Berry (born August 14, 1966 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American actress from Cleveland.
While she's considered one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood (to the point that she was frequently brought up any time a black man in 1990s/2000s fiction needed a Celeb Crush), Berry has a legacy of being a well-rounded actress on her own merits, with her roles ranging from slapstick comedy to gritty drama to romance to action to sci-fi.
She began her career as a model and transitioned into acting in the early 1990s. She won several awards (including a Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe) for the HBO biopic Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, and in 2001 became the first black woman and woman of color to win the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Monster's Ball. She later became one of the highest-paid Hollywood actresses of the 2000s, although her films have seen varied critical and commercial reception.
Berry has some notoriety among comic book fans, as while her portrayal of Storm in the X-Men Film Series was divisive, her performance as Catwoman in the 2004 live-action film was universally panned. She has been a good sport about the latter role, however. After winning the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress for the role, she became the second actor (after Tom Green) to accept her Razzie in person in what is now one of the most memorable moments in the ceremony's history
. She accepted the Razzie in one hand while carrying her Oscar in the other, parodied her emotional Oscar acceptance speech by starting her Razzie speech in exaggerated hysterics, and "thanked" Warner Bros., her manager, her acting coach, the rest of the film's cast, and the film's director Pitof, calling Catwoman "a piece-of-shit godawful movie". She then ended the speech by sincerely explaining that she was accepting the award as a testament to her mother's values of not being a sore loser and accepting criticism, and received a standing ovation from the audience.
Not to be confused with Halle Bailey of Chloe x Halle and The Little Mermaid (2023) fame.
Filmography:
- Revlon Spokesperson
- Jungle Fever (1991)
- The Last Boy Scout (1991)
- Boomerang (1992)
- The Flintstones (1994)
- Losing Isaiah (1995)
- Executive Decision (1996)
- The Rich Man's Wife (1996)
- Bulworth (1998)
- X-Men Film Series as Ororo Munroe / Storm:
- X-Men (2000)
- X2: X-Men United (2003)
- X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
- X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
- Swordfish (2001)
- Monster's Ball (2001)
- Die Another Day (2002)
- Gothika (2003)
- Catwoman (2004) (2004)
- Robots (2005) (voice)
- Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005)
- Perfect Stranger (2007)
- New Year's Eve (2011)
- Cloud Atlas (2012)
- Movie 43 (2013)
- The Call (2013)
- Kidnap (2017)
- Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)
- Kings (2017)
- John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019)
- Bruised (2021) — directorial debut, also starring
- Moonfall (2022)
- Amen
- Queen (A 1993 Mini Series based on the life of Alex Haley's paternal grandmother)
- Living Dolls
- Extant
- Former model and pageant winner
Music Videos
- Appeared as a cameo in Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott's 2002 music video, "Work It".
- Appeared in the Limp Bizkit video "Behind Blue Eyes", where she made out with Fred Durst, whom she was rumored to be dating at the time.
Her roles provide examples of:
- Ability over Appearance: The role of Sharon Stone in The Flintstones was written for the lady herself, who turned it down. Other white actresses were considered before Halle ultimately won the part.
- Actor-Shared Background:
- She played a biracial woman in Queen, and is one herself, though Berry identifies as just Black.
- She and Dorothy Dandridge were both born in the same hospital in Ohio, and their careers shared many similarities, although Halle was thankfully more successful in what roles she was able to play.
- Adam Westing: Her Razzie acceptance speech.
- Beauty Inversion: She's often had to 'de-glam' for serious roles.
- To achieve her desired look as a homeless crack addict in Jungle Fever she didn't bathe for two weeks. Spike Lee even refused her an audition at first until she offered to do it without her makeup on.
- Monster's Ball has her looking tired and with an unflattering hairstyle, with the scenes leaning more towards Fan Disservice.
- Bruised has her similarly looking tired and frequently sporting facial bruises, as well as emphasising that she's an alcoholic.
- Boyish Short Hair: She became known for her short pixie hairstyle, which she keeps returning to over the years. She even sported it as Storm in X-Men: Days of Future Past.
- Contractual Obligation Project: As it turns out, Catwoman (2004) was this.
- Costume Backlash: It turns out she disliked the Stripperiffic Catwoman costume as much as everyone else, first finding it too tight and uncomfortable, and the top kept coming off.
- Covered in Gunge: At the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards 2012.
- Directed by Cast Member: She directs and plays the lead role in Bruised.
- Fake Nationality: Storm hails from Kenya in the comics. Halle initially used an accent for her, before dropping it from the second film onwards.
- Half-Breed Discrimination: Her role in the televised movie role, Queen.
- Hide Your Pregnancy: She was pregnant filming X-Men: Days of Future Past and, while they were able to shoot around it and finish most of her scenes while she could still fit into the costume, a lot more action scenes had to be cut. Storm is the first one killed off in the final battle because of this.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: Halle played Dorothy Dandridge (the first African-American actress to be nominated for an "Best Actress Oscar" for her role as the title character in Carmen Jones) in the HBO movie Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. Halle later would become the first African-American actress to win a "Best Actress Oscar" for her performance in Monster's Ball.
- Money, Dear Boy:
- The press loved to talk about how she was paid $10,000 to flash her breasts in Swordfish for no real reason (although she did say that the scene was in the script and was told it was "not negotiable" to be taken out).
- Subverted in X-Men: The Last Stand, where she was initially demanding a higher paycheck. Then Catwoman happened and her salary was much smaller than she had originally asked.
- Ms. Fanservice: She began her career as a model and often was pigeonholed into these sexy roles, with directors and producers often unable to see her in anything more serious. While she has been able to play more substantial parts, she's continued to be this well into her fifties.
- Memetic Mutation: Caused by how easily her name and R&B singer Halle Bailey's can be confused, especially after Bailey was cast in the lead role in the live action remake of The Little Mermaid (1989).
- Non-Singing Voice: Wendi Williams provides the singing for her in Introducing Dorothy Dandridge.
- Not Even Bothering with the Accent: She used an attempt at an African accent in X-Men but given that it wasn't very good, she just used her own voice for the other films.
- Older Than They Look: If you didn’t know her birthdate, you’d easily mistake her for someone who’s in her 30s.
- On-Set Injury: Robert Downey Jr broke her arm during the interrogation scene in Gothika, halting production for eight weeks.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: Due to her pregnancy in X-Men: Days of Future Past Storm is given a sudden death as the first casualty in the battle with the Sentinels - as they had to hurriedly shoot all her scenes while Halle could still fit into her costume.
- Romance on the Set: She met and started a relationship with her French husband-to-be Olivier Martinez on the set of Dark Tide.
- The Runner-Up Takes It All: She was Miss Ohio in the 1986 Miss USA pageant and was the first runner up for the Miss USA title. Her later success speaks for itself.
- Star-Derailing Role: Catwoman notoriously reduced her salary for X-Men: The Last Stand, cancelled a spinoff centered around her Die Another Day character Jinx, and resulted in a sort-of hiatus for Berry's film career that wasn't helped by the failures of Gothika and the poor reception to her character in Die Another Day. These days she mostly laughs about it.
- Wag the Director:
- A positive example. Introducing Dorothy Dandridge ran over budget and they were going to cut the red carpet scene at the end. Halle however loved the scene and wanted it kept in, so she paid for it herself.
- By the time of X2: X-Men United, she wanted more scenes/lines and so they expanded on Storm's relationship with Nightcrawler and had the sequence of her using funnel clouds against planes chasing the X-Jet.
- In X Men Last Stand, she requested to fly more, since she hadn't got the chance to in the previous films.
- What Could Have Been:
- A spin-off centered around her Die Another Day character Jinx was in the works, but quickly cancelled after Catwoman failed.
- Angela Basset turned down the role of Leticia in Monster's Ball that Halle would win the Best Actress Oscar for, not wanting to play a prostitute (although other sources say she wasn't asked because she was already committed to Supernova). Vanessa Williams also turned it down because of the nudity required.
- She announced in 2020 that she was looking into playing a trans male character, but quickly backed down upon widespread criticism on the
Unfortunate Implications of such a casting. - She turned down the lead role in Gigli, which became a major Box Office Bomb and is considered one of the worst movies ever made.
- After her directorial debut Bruised, she expressed a desire to remake the Catwoman movie now with her as a director. And in the former, it was originally to be directed by Nick Cassavetes and star Blake Lively, before Halle took over both roles.
