The movie Halle Berry just can’t shake: “It’s a movie that I’ve required my children to watch”
At the turn of the millennium, Halle Berry exploded into the cinematic stratosphere with her biggest mainstream role to date in X-Men. It was swiftly followed by a history-making Academy Award win for ‘Best Actress’ in Monster’s Ball before she starred opposite Pierce Brosnan in the James Bond blockbuster Die Another Day.
Of course, she was hardly a complete unknown beforehand, having appeared in Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever, Tony Scott’s The Last Boy Scout, and hit Eddie Murphy comedy Boomerang. In addition to those, she also won both a Golden Globe and a Primetime Emmy for playing the title role in the made-for-TV biopic Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. However, being an Oscar-winning superhero with 007 experience would do wonders for anyone’s visibility and status.
In the decades since, Berry has tried her hand at virtually every form of filmmaking, from action and thriller to comedy and period pieces, as well as making her feature-length directorial debut in sports drama Bruised. And yet, one genre she’s never tackled on the big screen is the musical, despite one classic example leaving an impact that can only be described as multi-generational.
Released the year before she was even born, The Sound of Music nonetheless cast a massive shadow over the actor’s childhood, a lifelong love that she made sure carried through to her own children. When naming the five films that had a profound impact on her to A.Frame, the monumental musical was the first title to roll off her tongue.
Describing it as “one of the movies I used to watch over and over”, Berry did admit that her repeated revisits may have had something to do with the fact it was easily available and widely replayed on public television. She noted that “it seemed like it was on every weekend.”
Nonetheless, the heartwarming adventures of the Von Trapp family left a lasting impression on the star, who explained: “I just have a fond childhood memory of it that I haven’t been able to shake.” When she had kids of her own, rewatching The Sound of Music became an event for the Berry clan: “It’s a movie that I’ve required my children to watch, and something that we share together.”
There’s no harm in having a soft spot for the classics, never mind one that became the highest-grossing release in the history of cinema during its initial run on the silver screen. It won Julie Andrews an Academy Award for ‘Best Actress’ in what was her first-ever role in a film, in addition to four other major prizes at the Oscars, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’.
Having passed her fondness for The Sound of Music onto her own children, the seminal song-and-dance spectacular has been firmly embedded as one of her family’s go-to favourites for going on half a century.
