The role Halle Berry thought she’d be fired from: “I did think I was going to be recast”
From beauty pageants to romcoms to becoming the first ever African-American ‘Best Actress’ Oscar winner, Halle Berry has had a remarkable career. As comfortable in a gritty drama as she is controlling the weather in a superhero movie, Berry has also branched out into the worlds of directing and producing. It hasn’t always been easy – Catwoman would like a word – but she established herself as one of the most recognisable female actors on the planet.
The Ohio-born star has put a lot of work in to get to where she is today, including putting her body on the line multiple times. Robert Downey Jr once accidentally broke her arm on the set of the movie Gothika, following a sparring session gone wrong. She broke three ribs whilst filming John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and was submerged underwater for over two-and-a-half minutes during the making of Dark Tide.
Injuring yourself on the set of an action movie or a horror makes sense, but Berry also managed to do herself harm whilst making the introspective, time-hopping drama Cloud Atlas. Whilst filming on the island of Majorca just two days into the project, the Monster’s Ball star slipped and broke five bones in her foot. It’s unclear what she was doing, but given this was Majorca, she was probably carrying two piña coladas back to her poolside sun lounger. That was a joke, by the way, in case any of Ms. Berry’s legal team are reading this.
This put her role in the movie in serious jeopardy. Actually, that should be ‘roles’ plural. The story of Cloud Atlas, which is based on the novel of the same name by David Mitchell, spans multiple eras of history. The cast, which also includes Tom Hanks, Jim Broadbent, Susan Sarandon, and Colin Firth, play multiple different characters across each different period. Berry was scheduled to play six different parts, which is why she was so worried about her little accident.
“I did think I was going to be recast,” she told Front Row Features. “I knew this was a physical role and I wasn’t sure how I was going to be able to do it.” Some of her parts don’t amount to much, including a background party guest with no dialogue, but others are the main characters of their respective segments. In the 1973 portion of the movie, she plays a woman who discovers rampant corruption at a nuclear power plant, and must contend with the shady forces that lie within. In another, she portrays a Maori slave, a small yet highly involved role.
Fortunately, Berry was able to recover in time to complete the film. Unfortunately, Cloud Atlas turned out to be a bit of a disaster. Fears of Mitchell’s novel being ‘unfilmable’ were quickly realised, as its sprawling, multi-faceted narrative simply did not translate to the big screen. Some critics and prominent cast members were highly complimentary of the finished product, but in the end, it will have to go down as a bust.
The movie business isn’t all glitz and glamour. Actors have to take extremely good care of themselves, as even the smallest injury can derail a production and lose a studio millions of dollars. Berry found this out the hard way. She’ll never visit the Balearic islands ever again.
