“It was a labour of love”: The one movie Halle Berry is proudest of
Even though she’d been working for a decade by that point, it wasn’t until the turn of the millennium that Halle Berry was given the platform to announce herself as a force to be reckoned with on-screen, which was proven beyond doubt by a trio of wildly different projects that arrived in quick succession.
The dedication and commitment that saw her rise to the top of the industry were there from the very beginning, though, with Berry going method for her feature film debut in Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever to blow away any preconceptions that her modelling and beauty pageant background was going to see her play it safe and choose roles that required little more of her than looking the part.
It was admittedly a gradual process, with small parts in cult favourite buddy cop caper The Last Boy Scout, family-friendly frolic The Flintstones, airborne actioner Executive Decision, and satirical comedy Bulworth keeping her plenty busy without providing her with a performance substantial enough to sink her teeth into that would propel her career to the next level.
Good things regularly come to those who wait, and in Berry’s case, that came when Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, X-Men, and Monster’s Ball all released between August 1999 and December 2001, catapulting her right up the Hollywood ladder. The trio couldn’t have been more different on virtually every level, but each of them allowed the star to showcase the breadth of her talent.
For embodying the trailblazing Dandridge, Berry won a Golden Globe for ‘Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film’, and it doubled as her first credit as an executive producer. Bryan Singer’s X-Men ushered in the comic book boom that’s still going strong today, while Monster’s Ball saw Berry make history as the first African-American performer to win an Academy Award for ‘Best Actress’.
As far as golden periods go, they don’t come much more fruitful than that, but there’s only one of the three that stands tallest for Berry. When asked to name the project she was proudest of throughout her entire career, there was no hesitation on her part.
Describing Introducing Dorothy Dandridge as “a labour of love”, the star “wanted to tell her story so much”. As a result, it sticks out as an undisputed highlight for a three-decade career. “When I think about my happiest moments, it was when that movie got made,” she said. “After the first screening of it, I thought, ‘Wow! I had an idea, and we did it!'” A defining moment it may have been, but as an HBO exclusive, the biographical drama didn’t play in so much as a single cinema.
Nonetheless, Berry labelled it as “surreal to see the finished product” long before it premiered on the small screen, having shepherded it “from just a thought in our minds” to an acclaimed, award-winning, and, in her eyes, career-defining film.
