Halle Berry names the hardest thing she’s ever done in her career: “It was harrowing”
For some actors, the trajectory of their career is straightforward, and they only ever wear one hat. But others have a creative itch to merge into another lane, tempted by the allure of another discipline within the film industry. For people like Emma Stone and Margot Robbie, that might be producing, and for others, it might be the switch from acting to directing, with Greta Gerwig and Zoe Kravitz moving behind the camera after years in front of it. And in 2020, Halle Berry followed in their footsteps and later explained why this was one of the most challenging experiences of her career.
Bruised was Halle Berry’s directorial debut, taking on the story of Jackie Justice, a disgraced mixed martial arts fighter who is scouted to take part in an underground fight while also being reunited with the son she abandoned as a baby.
As well as directing the film, Berry also stars in the lead role, which is a notoriously complex challenge, seemingly having to be in two places at once at all time. The likes of Bradley Cooper and Jesse Eisenberg have recently taken on this challenge, with both of them emphasising the many difficulties of wearing multiple hats.
But Berry is no stranger to a challenge and has made her name through a number of gritty and demanding roles, one of which earned her an Academy Award for ‘Best Actress’ in 2001, and remains to this day as the only woman of colour to receive this award. She has been subject to scrutiny and criticism from audiences and critics alike, going through the plight that many women in Hollywood go through as they are intensely loved one minute and then viciously hated the next, with many people slamming her performance as Catwoman, which famously nearly killed her career.
Despite all of this, Berry revealed that her most challenging creative experience was as the director for Bruised, saying, “It was harrowing. It was the hardest thing I’ve done in my professional career, because the character was a big, huge character that required a lot of my time and attention and preparation, and then directing for the first time also required a lot of my time, attention and preparation”.
She added: “So I was burning the candle at both ends, which made for super long days, really stressful days”.
Directing is an all-encompassing job that requires you to be constantly switched on and making decisions, acting as the ringleader and champion for a project that would pretty much die without you. It isn’t a matter of life and death, but it somehow feels like it is.
But Berry ultimately found the experience incredibly rewarding, describing how “at the end of the day, I was engrossed in doing something that I loved and something that I felt passionate about. And it was a story that I felt like if I didn’t tell, I was going to die”. The process of bringing any idea to life can completely consume you, but perhaps this is the only right way to do it.
