Academy Award-winning actress Halle Berry admits that she was shocked when the roles dried up after she took home the Best Actress Oscar in 1992 for her starring role in Monster’s Ball.
Berry, 53, became the first — and to this day, only — Black actress to take home the golden statue in that category. But instead of her getting a gang of quality and coveted roles, Berry’s mailbox became bare.
“I thought they were going to just back up the truck and drop them off at my house, right? When you have a historic win like that, you think, ‘Oh, this is going to fundamentally change,’” Berry revealed as she struggled to land roles that White actresses were routinely handed.
“It did fundamentally change me, but it didn’t change my place in the business overnight. I still had to go back to work. I still had to try to fight to make a way out of no way.”
It may have informed her decision to take the lead role in what is widely considered the worst superhero movie of all time, 2004’s Catwoman. Berry remains good-natured about being trampled half to death by critics in that film. In fact, the 53-year-old even accepted the Worst Actress Award in person at the 2005 Golden Raspberry Awards in 2005. Despite the fact that the film swept the major awards, winning Worst Picture, Worst Director and Worst Screenplay, Berry has no regrets going after perhaps the biggest bag of her career.
“For me, it was one of the biggest paydays of my whole life, which, there’s nothing wrong with that,” she said. “I don’t want to feel like ‘Oh, I can only do award-worthy stuff.’ What is an award-worthy performance?”
