“Adversity does not discriminate”: the director who fought back against Halle Berry’s finest hour
After gaining attention as a model and a beauty pageant contestant, Halle Berry moved into film in the early 1990s and quickly rose up the ranks to become a bona fide Hollywood icon whose made her fair share of movie history.
In 2001, Berry starred in Marc Foster’s film Monster’s Ball, playing a single mother who begins a relationship with a prison guard, in the form of Billy-Bob Thornton, unaware that he played a role in the execution of her husband, who was played by Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, so don’t feel too bad for him. For her performance, Berry was awarded the Oscar for ‘Best Actress’, becoming the first (and thus far only) African-American woman to claim this prize.
According to Berry herself, however, this moment very nearly didn’t happen. Speaking to W magazine, the star revealed that Lee Daniels, who produced the film, initially didn’t want her to play the lead because he thought she was too pretty to accurately portray an ordinary woman who had been through so much hardship.
“He was actually disgusted by the thought,” she said, “He thought there’s no way, and my argument to him was, just because someone looks a certain way doesn’t mean that they are spared adversity. Adversity does not discriminate. I thought, ‘My looks haven’t spared me one hardship or one hurt moment or one painful situation. So please, you know, give me a shot at this’.”
Prior to Berry’s casting, a number of other actors were considered for the role of Leticia Musgrove. Angela Bassett and Vanessa Williams were the main ones, but both ended up declining. It’s interesting that both of those names are older than Berry; Williams is only three years older, but Bassett has almost a decade on her. Perhaps this is another reason why Daniels was initially hesitant.
At this point in her career, Berry hadn’t appeared in a lot of what some people would call ‘serious’ movies. She’d played a lot of characters who were known for their good looks, which isn’t a slight against her, but rather the film industry at the time that pigeon-holed her so strongly.
She was a sex symbol, and this is something that Daniels thought would detract from the realism of Monster’s Ball’s story. Although that logic kind of falls apart when you realise he cast Heath Ledger, another famously attractive individual, and the aforementioned Diddy, a world-famous rapper, in other parts. Vanessa Williams also won the Miss America pageant in 1984, which complicates things further.
As we all know, casting Berry was exactly the right thing to do, wherein she turned in an outstanding performance and carried Monster’s Ball to a history-making night at the Academy Awards.
You could argue that her win had little long-term impact on Black women at the Oscars, but in the moment, it was something really special.
