No one will ever forget Halle Berry's emotional acceptance speech at the Oscars . No one, that is, save for Halle Berry, who cannot remember it at all. No, seriously. From the moment her name was called out from the podium right through to the Governor's Ball afterwards, her mind, she claims, was a complete and utter blank. As her friend Denzel Washington ( who won an Oscar for Training Day ) confirmed at the time: 'Halle? Man, she was just totally gone.'

Oscar Glory: Berry at this year's ceremony

'Yeah, it's true,' says Berry, who, as if anyone didn't know, was the first black woman to win a Best Actress award for her role in the film Monster's Ball. 'I have no idea what I said that night. I mean, I looked at my mom, I looked at my husband, but I don't actually remember seeing their faces. After that I don't know what happened. Denzel was right, I just lost it that night.'

It is a muggy spring day on the Pinewood Studios lot in Buckinghamshire, and I have just pitched up at Berry's trailer on the set of the latest James Bond film, Die Another Day, in which she plays the lead female role - a feisty all-action character called Jinx - opposite Pierce Brosnan .

Berry, who is 35 years old (though she could easily pass for 17), is dressed in standard Star Off Duty gear today: sweatpants, trainers and a baggy T-shirt with 'Roxy' written across the front. Though she will be back on set in just coffee-ice-cream complexion bear not a trace of make-up. Of course, like any truly beautiful woman, she is far more exquisite without it. As Warren Beatty, her co-star in the 1998 film Bulworth, once rightly enthused, 'She stuns you when she walks through the door before she's even said a word.'

Apart from a slight wateriness, there is no evidence of the inflamed cornea she suffered recently while on location for Die Another Day in Cadiz (a smoke grenade accidentally exploded in her face and she had to be rushed off to hospital to get the debris removed from her left eye). Nor, for that matter, can one make out any vestige of the 22 stitches she had to have in her forehead after the car collision she was involved in just over 18 months ago. Meanwhile, despite all the reports raging in the tabloids that her beloved husband, the dreadlocked R&B musician Eric Benet, has been cheating on her with a former girlfriend, Berry seems perfectly serene and happy. But more of this later.

We are not alone this afternoon. Also here for lunch is Berry's Liverpool-born mother Judy, a retired registered nurse, who is over from Cleveland, Ohio, for a visit. An English rosed'un certain age (Berry's black heritage is courtesy of her estranged father, Jerome), Judy is carrying a plate of food and hovering around looking like she doesn't quite know where to sit. Not wanting to exclude her from the conversation - she does seem such a very nice lady - I ask what her reaction was on Oscar night; how it felt having the entire Kodak auditorium (as well as the 18 million-plus television viewers around the world) hear how it was she who gave Halle 'the strength to fight every single day, to be who I want to be and to give me the courage to dream'?

'Oh, it was awesome,' recalls Judy, in her totally Americanised accent (she left Merseyside more than 40 years ago), 'just awesome...' Her voice trails off as she continues to dither over the placement situation.

'OK, Mom,' says Halle eventually, 'why don't you go sit over there?' She points Judy in the direction of the dining alcove, opposite an American-style fridge packed with Evian and Diet Coke. I follow Halle to the other end of the trailer, past the TV and the abdominal cruncher, to a cluster of white leatherette armchairs, one of which she curls herself up in, balancing a large plate of chicken and curried rice on her lap. 'Your lunch OK, Mom?' she calls out. 'It is? Good.' Then she fixes me with those limpid, inquiring eyes of hers. OK, they say, shoot.

Halle Berry is not exactly a stranger to the awards podium. Or, indeed, the emotional acceptance speech, as revealed in a recent US episode of Where Are They Now? that showed her tear-stained performance after she won the Miss Teen All-American award in 1984. Then there was the Golden Globe in 2000 for her TV performance as the black Fifties actress Dorothy Dandridge; a particularly gratifying moment as Berry had spent five years trying to get the go-ahead for the project, which was put together by her own company, Petey Productions. But being the first black woman to receive an Academy Award for Best Actress - and beating Nicole Kidman, Sissy Spacek and Judi Dench into the bargain - is, without doubt, the supreme accolade. Particularly when one considers how hard she's had to struggle to get to this point.