Halle Berry admits that directing “Bruised” was the hardest challenge of her career.
The 55-year-old star makes her debut behind the camera in the sports drama flick, where she also plays a disgraced MMA fighter who decides to return for an unsanctioned bout and admits that she felt like it was a triumph against the odds to helm the movie.
Speaking at a Hollywood screening on Saturday, Nov. 13, Berry told The Hollywood Reporter: “I don’t know how I did it. I was on some adrenaline, I was on a high.
“I had to get this out of my body and so I had to do it, I just had to keep going day after day and I was energized by it, I was ignited by and I was refusing to be told ‘no.’ ”
The Oscar-winning star had been despairing that no filmmaker could match her vision for the project until a producer suggested that she should take the bold step of directing the film herself.
Berry explained: “All of the filmmakers that I spoke to, they didn’t see the story that I saw in my head, they couldn’t quite understand all the elements of this.”
“I finally went home one night and I was pretty distraught because I was like, ‘Oh god, I can’t seem to get a filmmaker to make this story.’ And then my dear friend, [producer] Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas said to me, ‘Why don’t you direct?’ And I said, ‘Me? I’ve never directed a movie before, this is too big of a role to play. I can’t do that.’ ”
“She said, ‘You absolutely can, you love it like I’ve never seen anybody love anything.’ ”
The Monster’s Ball star also suggested that she is determined to continue directing projects.
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