Halle Berry explains why winning an Oscar was “one of her biggest heartbreaks”
Setting out as a model, Halle Berry first turned heads in the late 1980s after becoming the first runner-up in the Miss USA beauty pageant. Over the following few years, she broke into Hollywood with a foundational appearance in the 1992 romantic comedy Boomerang. As the decade wore on, Berry continued to develop her talent and reached an early climax with 1999’s Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe.
Taking no time to cherish these accolades, Berry sauntered straight into her career’s biggest success, Monster’s Ball. For her compelling performance in Marc Forster’s 2001 indie drama, Berry won the Academy Award for ‘Best Actress’ the following year. However, Berry’s career took an unexpected downturn after a critically revered appearance as Bond girl Jinx in Pierce Brosnan’s final James Bond outing, Die Another Day.
In a 2020 interview with Variety, Berry discussed her brush with the fearsome “Oscar Curse”. Naturally, she had half-expected to have all the top-flight filmmakers knocking at her door, but it was soon apparent the prominent roles wouldn’t come along.
“I think it’s largely because there was no place for someone like me,” Berry explained. “I thought, ‘Oh, all these great scripts are going to come my way; these great directors are going to be banging on my door.’ It didn’t happen. It actually got a little harder. They call it the Oscar curse. You’re expected to turn in award-worthy performances.”
In 2002, during her Academy Award acceptance speech, Berry stated proudly that she had opened a door in the entertainment industry for “every nameless, faceless woman of colour”. Sadly, in the two decades that passed before her conversation with Variety, not a single leading Black female actor had managed to follow suit.
“I thought Cynthia [Erivo, who starred in Harriet] was going to do it last year,” Berry said. “I thought Ruth [Negga, nominated for 2016’s Loving] had a really good shot at it too. I thought there were women that rightfully, arguably, could have, should have. I hoped they would have, but why it hasn’t gone that way, I don’t have the answer.”
“It’s one of my biggest heartbreaks,” she added, returning to her experience after the Oscar win. “The morning after, I thought, ‘Wow, I was chosen to open a door.’ And then, to have no one … I question, ‘Was that an important moment, or was it just an important moment for me?’ I wanted to believe it was so much bigger than me. It felt so much bigger than me, mainly because I knew others should have been there before me, and they weren’t.”
Now, Berry looks back on the award win as a personal and isolated victory that couldn’t promise future success. “Just because I won an award doesn’t mean that, magically, the next day, there was a place for me,” she continued. “I was just continuing to forge a way out of no way.”
Watch a trailer for Marc Forster’s Monster’s Ball below.
