Halle Berry Blog

Halle Maria Berry (born August 14, 1966 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an Emmy, Golden Globe, and Academy Award-winning American actress and former fashion model and beauty queen. In 2002, Berry won Best Actress at the Academy Awards for her role in Monster’s Ball.

Early life and career

Berry’s parents selected her first name from that of Halle’s Department Store, which was then a local landmark in her birthplace of Cleveland, Ohio. She is the daughter of Judith Ann Hawkins, an English Liverpudlian, and Jerome J. Berry, who was African American. Berry’s maternal grandmother, Nellie Dicken, was born in Sawley, Derbyshire, England, while her maternal grandfather, Earl Ellsworth Hawkins, was born in Ohio.Berry’s parents divorced when she was 4 years old and she subsequently was raised by her mother, a psychiatric nurse. Her father was an orderly in the same psychiatric ward where her mother worked. Berry has an older sister, Heidi who was born seven years before her.

In 1989, Berry was diagnosed with diabetes mellitus type 1.

Berry was a popular student at Bedford High School and was a cheerleader, honor society member, editor of the school newspaper, class president and prom queen. She worked in the children’s department at Higbee’s Department store. She subsequently attended Cuyahoga Community College.

Before becoming an actress, she entered several beauty contests, winning Miss Ohio USA and Miss Teen All-American. Other entries include Miss USA (first runner-up in 1986 to Christy Fichtner of Texas, the second of the Texas Aces), and sixth place in Miss World 1986 (the winner being Trinidad and Tobago’s Giselle Laronde). In the Miss USA 1986 pageant interview competition, she said she hoped to become an entertainer, or to have something to do with the media or newspaper. Her interview was awarded the highest score by the judges.

Hollywood career

In the late 1980s, she went to Chicago, to pursue a modeling career as well as acting. One of her first acting projects was a television series for local cable by Gordon Lake Productions called “Chicago Force.”

Berry auditioned for a role in an updated Charlie’s Angels television series by producer Aaron Spelling. She impressed Spelling and he encouraged her to continue acting.

In 1989, Berry landed the role of Emily Franklin in the short-lived ABC television series Living Dolls (a spin-off of Who’s the Boss?). Her breakthrough feature film role was in Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever in which she played a drug addict named Vivian. Her first co-starring role was in the film Strictly Business. In (1992) Berry portrayed a career woman who falls for Eddie Murphy in the romantic comedy Boomerang. That same year, Berry caught the public’s attention as a headstrong biracial slave in the TV adaption of Queen: The Story of an American Family, based on the book by Alex Haley. Another early role Berry played was the sultry secretary in the live action Flintstones movie as “Sharon Stone”,in a part rumored to have been intended for Sharon Stone (Berry would later co-star alongside Stone in Catwoman). As a former drug addict struggling to regain custody of her son in “Losing Isaiah” (1995), Berry showed she could handle more serious fare, holding her own opposite powerhouse co-star Jessica Lange. In (1996), she played the role of Sandra Beecher in Race the Sun, which was based on a true story, and co-starred along side Kurt Russell in Executive Decision. Berry received praise for her role as an intelligent woman raised by activists who gives an older politician Warren Beatty a new lease on life in Bulworth and as the singer Zola Taylor, one of the three wives of pop singer Frankie Lymon, in the unfortunately overlooked biopic Why Do Fools Fall in Love both of (1998).

In 1999, Berry portrayed the first black woman to be nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award in the HBO biopic Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. Berry’s performance was recognized with several awards, including an Emmy and Golden Globe. She also served as one of the producers of the project. Berry portrayed the mutant Storm in the movie adaptation of the popular comic book series X-Men (2000) and its successful sequels X2: X-Men United (2003) and X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). In late 2001, Berry appeared as Leticia Musgrove, the wife of an executed murderer, in the film Monster’s Ball. Her performance was awarded prizes from groups like the National Board of Review and the Screen Actors Guild. The role earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress in which she made history by becoming the first African American woman to earn a Best Actress Academy Award.

As Bond Girl Jinx in the (2002) blockbuster Die Another Day she famously re-created the scene from Dr. No, bursting from the surf to be greeted by James Bond, as Ursula Andress did 40 years earlier. In late 2003, Berry starred in the psychological thriller Gothika opposite Robert Downey Jr.. Her next lead role was in the film Catwoman, for which she was awarded a “worst actress” Razzie award in 2005, which she accepted in person with a sense of humor and recognition that “to be at the top, you must experience the rock bottom”.

Berry’s next performance was for television, where she appeared in the Oprah Winfrey produced ABC telepic Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005), an adaptation of the popular Zora Neale Hurston novel in which Berry played Janie Crawford, an iconoclastic, free-spirited woman whose unconventional mores regarding relationships upset her 1920s contemporaries in her small community. Meanwhile, she voiced the character of Cappy, one of the many mechanical beings in the animated feature, Robots (2005).

She has recently (2006) filmed the thriller Perfect Stranger with Bruce Willis and just wrapped shooting Things We Lost in the Fire with Benicio Del Toro. She is set to star in “Class Act”, based on the real life story of a teacher whose students helped her run for political office.

Berry is also making a transition to behind the scenes work in film and television. She is working with author Angela Nissel to executive produce a comedy series based on Nissel’s two memoirs, The Broke Diaries and Mixed: My Life in Black and White.

Berry has served many years as the face of Revlon cosmetics and was recently named the new face of Versace. She is featured in Maxim magazine’s Girls of Maxim gallery. She is also one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood, commanding $14 million each for Gothika and Catwoman.

Personal life
 
Berry has been married twice. Her first marriage in 1992 to pro baseball player David Justice ended in divorce in 1996. David played with the Atlanta Braves and had experienced a measure of fame as the team rose to national attention in the early 1990s. They found it difficult to maintain their relationship when he was playing baseball and she was filming elsewhere. Her second marriage in 2001 to musician Eric Benét resulted in a 2004 separation and 2005 divorce. In 2004, after their separation, Berry stated “I want love, and I will find it, hopefully”.

As of 2006, she is currently dating Canadian supermodel Gabriel Aubry, who is nine years her junior. The couple met at a Versace photoshoot. After six months with Aubry, she stated in an interview “I’m really happy in my personal life, which is a novelty to me. You know I’m not the girl that has the best relationships”.

Berry recently revealed to Extra that she plans to adopt children. “I will adopt if it doesn’t happen for me naturally”, she said. “I will definitely adopt. And I probably will adopt even if it does happen naturally”. It has since been speculated that Aubry, who lived in five foster families between the ages of 3 and 18, possibly inspired Berry’s interest in adoption.Later, she stated “I never want to be married again. I guess you could say I have bad taste in men. But I no longer feel the need to be someone’s wife. I don’t feel like I need to be validated by being in a marriage.”

When speaking on the subject of having her own biological child, Berry has recently indicated that she has given thought to Aubry being the father, but that it is too early for that level of commitment involving a biological child between them. She stated that they both share the same feelings against the need to be married, and she indicated this to be one of she and Aubry’s many strong bonds with one another. She stated that both feel the need to commit to one person emotionally and physically, but neither feels the obligation to marry in order to make that commitment official.