Halle Berry’s most pointless attempt at method acting: “I was in it, 24/7”
Halle Berry has not always been treated kindly by the film industry at large, something that is sadly all too common for many women in showbiz who are ripped apart for performances that are completely inoffensive.
It could be Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls or Demi Moore in G.I. Jane, but there are many cases in which women have been unfairly obliterated for performances that really aren’t that bad, being held to a completely different standard than their male counterparts and punished for the remainder of their careers for creative projects that didn’t pan out in the way they wanted.
Nobody sets out to make a bad movie, but regardless, the public seems to publish certain stars as if this is their sole intention. The truth is, anything can set a movie on the wrong path. Casting, scripts and on-screen chemistry can all be befouled, even with the best intentions. The truth is, there is a large number of moving parts that go into making a good film, and sometimes those gears can get clogged.
However, none of this was considered when Halle Berry was famously obliterated for her role as Catwoman, even though the actor poured everything into the part and embraced the method approach to get her into the right feline mindset.
Catwoman is one of the famously ill-fated superhero projects, with the studio attempting to make a standalone series about the slick, cat-like character from the comics, but failed to adapt it well. This seems to be a fate that awaits many female superheroes, with very few given the same treatment as the male heroes and created as an afterthought or money-grabbing scheme, with little effort put into crafting a decent story.
Unfortunately, Berry happened to have her name attached to such a project, and struggled to make a comeback after it failed miserably and tainted her reputation in the industry. Yet despite this, she truly put her all into realising this iconic character, describing how she tried an unusual method to find her way into the mind of a cat.
When discussing this, Berry said, “They gave me a cat early on because I didn’t have one. His name was Playdough. I watched, studied, and learned how cats think. I didn’t have the responsibility of children and family; I was just a woman alone with a lot of idle time to focus on this. I was full-on cat, all the time. I’d crawl around my house, trying to jump on my counters, thinking, If I were a cat, how would I get up there? I was in it 24/7”.
It’s a strange way to live, and not a situation that many actors would find themselves in when preparing for a role. It’s a predicament that might be strangely familiar to Anne Hathaway, who also played this character in Christopher Nolan’s take on the story, but putting yourself into the mind of a cat is a rather odd process to be consumed by, and one that didn’t quite pan out for Berry in the way she hoped.
