Halle Maria Berry (born August 14, 1966 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American actress from Cleveland, and is considered one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood. She's a well-rounded actress, whose roles have ranged from slapstick comedy to gritty drama to romance to action to sci-fi. Berry received several awards for the HBO biopic Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, and in 2001 she became the first black woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her role in Monster's Ball. She has also been involved in the production side of several of her films.
Berry has some notoriety among comic book fans, as while her portrayal of Storm had mixed reception, her performance as Catwoman was universally panned. She has been a good sport about it, however. When it was announced that she would "win" the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress for Catwoman, she became the second actor (after Tom Green) to accept her Razzie in person, bringing her Oscar along, and parodying her acceptance speech. She received a standing ovation from the audience.
If you can overlook the fact that her take on Catwoman was an In Name Only version of the character, she's one of just a handful of actors who has played both a Marvel Comics character and a DC Comics character—and one of even fewer actors to play both a Marvel and a DC superhero.note
Expect her to turn up any time a black man in fiction needs a Celebrity Crush.
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)
- 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 (2018)
- John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019)
- Bruised (unknown release date) — directorial debut
, also starring
- 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:
- Actor-Shared Background: She played a biracial woman in Queen, and is one herself, though Berry identifies as just Black.
- Adam Westing: Her Razzie acceptance speech.
- Beauty Contest: She won several before becoming an actress.
- Beauty Inversion: To achieve her desired look as a homeless crack addict in Jungle Fever she didn't bathe for two weeks.
- Boyish Short Hair: Subverted. Fashion mags loved to go on about how well she wears short hair.
- Break the Haughty: There was a lot of talk about her Oscar win going to her head, to the degree that she was requesting to be featured more prominently on the Die Another Day than James Bond himself and said she wouldn't even cameo in X-Men: The Last Stand without a massive paycheck. Then Catwoman bombed and brought her down to Earth - something she acknowledged in her Razzie acceptance speech ("it was just what my career needed").
- Contractual Obligation Project: As it turns out, Catwoman was this.
- Covered in Gunge: At the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards 2012.
- Damsel in Distress: For the majority of Queen.
- Glamorous Wartime Singer: Dorothy Dandridge in Introducing Dorothy Dandridge.
- Graceful Loser: She had the good grace to show up to collect her Razzie for Catwoman in person.
- Half-Breed Discrimination: Her role in the televised movie role, Queen. She also mentioned this happened in her youth when bullies used to refer to her as an "Oreo" and put Oreo cookies in mailbox to mock her biracial heritage. She has also been attacked for not being dark enough to play Storm, who's from Kenya (at least in the comics).
- 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.
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Hollywood Homely: Somehow Halle Berry has twice been cast this way: in Boomerang (1992) and Catwoman. This is so ridiculous that this is referenced in the page quote for this trope! - 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.
- 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: Even into her fifties.
- Name's the Same: The rise of R&B singer Halle Bailey caused a bit of Memetic Mutation with how easily her name and Berry's can be confused, especially after Bailey was cast in the lead role in the live action remake of The Little Mermaid (1989).
- 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 late 20s to early 30s.
- 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 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.
- Uncle Tomfoolery: Her role in Baps qualifies.
- 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.
- She announced in 2020 that she was looking into playing a Transgender male character, but quickly backed down upon a massive attack on the Unfortunate Implications of such a casting.
