Halle Berry
(born August 14, 1966,
Cleveland
,
Ohio
, U.S.) is an American film actress, the first African American to win the
Academy Award
for best actress. She received the honour for her
nuanced
portrayal of Leticia Musgrove, a down-on-her-luck character in
Monster’s Ball
(2001).
Berry was a teenage finalist in national beauty pageants, worked in modeling, and began acting on television in 1989. Film roles in
Jungle Fever
(1991), directed by
Spike Lee
, and in
Boomerang
(1992), starring
Eddie Murphy
, first brought her notice. She starred with
Jessica Lange
in
Losing Isaiah
(1995), a drama about adoption, before earning acclaim for her portrayal of film star
Dorothy Dandridge
, the first African American to be nominated for a best-actress Oscar, in the television film
Introducing Dorothy Dandridge
(1999). That performance earned her
Emmy
and
Golden Globe
awards.
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Oscar-Worthy Movie Trivia
Berry was cast in action roles in
X-Men
(2000) and its sequels
(2003
,
2006
,
2014
),
Swordfish
(2001), and
Die Another Day
(2002), an installment in the
James Bond
spy series. The thriller
Gothika
(2003) and the
Batman
spin-off
Catwoman
(2004) were the first theatrical films in which she received top billing. After starring in the television movie
Their Eyes Were Watching God
(2005), an
adaptation
of
Zora Neale Hurston
’s
novel
, Berry played opposite
Bruce Willis
in the crime film
Perfect Stranger
(2007). She then took lead roles in the character-oriented dramas
Things We Lost in the Fire
(2007), as a recent widow, and
Frankie & Alice
(2010), as a woman with
dissociative identity disorder
.
In 2011 Berry appeared in the ensemble
romantic
comedy
New Year’s Eve
, and the following year she starred as a diving instructor vexed by sharks in the thriller
Dark Tide
. In the elaborately structured epic
Cloud Atlas
(2012), she performed multiple roles, including those of a 1970s journalist and a male Asian doctor from 2144. Berry later starred in the thrillers
The Call
(2013) and
Kidnap
(2017), portraying an emergency call-centre operator attempting to thwart a serial killer and a mother whose son is abducted, respectively. She then appeared in the spy movie
Kingsman: The Golden Circle
and starred in
Kings
(both 2017), playing a foster parent living in
Los Angeles
during the
riots of 1992
. She later was cast in the action thriller
John Wick: Chapter 3?Parabellum
(2019).
Berry made her directorial
debut
with
Bruised
(2020), in which she starred as a washed-up
mixed martial arts
fighter seeking redemption in the ring and as a mother. In the sci-fi thriller
Moonfall
(2022), she was cast as an astronaut on a mission to prevent the Moon from colliding with Earth.