Though Halle Berry made history as the first (and to this day, only) Black woman to win the Best Actress Oscar in 2002, the movie star-cum-entrepreneur said it didn’t alter the trajectory of her Hollywood career.
In a new profile from The Cut‘s Monica Corcoran Harel tied to the release of her forthcoming feature Crime 101, Berry recalled the win — for her portrayal in Lee Daniels’ Monster’s Ball, also co-starring Billy Bob Thornton and Heath Ledger — “didn’t necessarily change the course of my career. After I won it, I thought there was going to be, like, a script truck showing up outside my front door.”
She continued, “While I was wildly proud of it, I was still Black that next morning. Directors were still saying, ‘If we put a Black woman in this role, what does this mean for the whole story? Do I have to cast a Black man? Then it’s a Black movie. Black movies don’t sell overseas.’” (As such, she told the outlet she once advised Cynthia Erivo, who was thrice-nominated at the fete: “You goddamn deserve it, but I don’t know that it’s going to change your life. It cannot be the validation for what you do, right?”)
Berry’s reflection on the career high point reflects a similar sentiment shared by Lupita Nyong’o last year; while speaking with CNN, the actress — who broke out with her Academy Award-winning performance in 12 Years a Slave — said the triumph didn’t result in a diverse array of role offerings.
“You know what’s interesting is that, after I won that Academy Award, you’d think, ‘Oh, I’m gonna get lead roles here and there.’ [Instead, it was], ‘Oh, Lupita, we’d like you to play another movie where you’re a slave, but this time you’re on a slave ship.’ Those are the kind of offers I was getting in the months after winning my Academy Award,” Nyong’o said at the time.
Outside of Crime 101, Berry has a slate of upcoming projects and has gone toe-to-toe with Gov. Gavin Newsom over his vetoing of a menopause bill, a point of contention stemming from her menopause wellness and advocacy company Respin, which she initially launched in 2020 and retooled last year.