The “god-awful” movie Halle Berry would rather forget and will always regret
With quick wit and an underrated commitment towards dramatic performances, Halle Berry is one of the most celebrated female leading actors of the 21st century. Rising to fame during the 1990s, a time of triumph and breakthrough for leading female stars, Berry found success beside the likes of Michelle Pfeiffer, Drew Barrymore, Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock.
Although the final decade of the 20th century was a crucial formative year for the actor, it wasn’t until the new millennium that Berry would become a bona fide screen icon. Having starred in low-key comedy and drama movies up until 2000, her career would change significantly when she was brought on to appear in the Bryan Singer superhero flick X-Men, appearing beside the likes of Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart.
Indeed, Marvel movies had been released before X-Men, with The Punisher being released in 1989 and Blade hitting cinemas just under a decade later, but Singer’s film was an entirely different proposition. Framed as being the new modern blockbuster, X-Men performed incredibly well at the box office, making $296million from a budget of $75m, catapulting Berry to worldwide fame whilst inadvertently sparking the superhero genre obsession.
Having announced herself as a powerful action star, Berry followed her success up with a major supporting role in the James Bond flick Die Another Day before an X-Men sequel came calling, as well as a fateful DC project that would go on to become her greatest career misfire.
Created by Marvel’s direct industry rivals, Catwoman was supposed to be a major female-led superhero flick but ended up being a colossal creative and commercial mistake. Ironically, helmed by French visual effects supervisor Pitof, despite the film looking like a poorly rendered cartoon, the movie told the story of a woman and an antihero who is gifted with the reflexes, speed and senses of a cat.
Despised by critics for its complete lack of artistic integrity and hated by the company behind the mess, Warner Bros, due to its lacklustre box office returns of just $82m, Catwoman remains a stain on the otherwise glittering filmography of Halle Berry.
So bad was the movie that it was nominated for a Golden Raspberry, with Berry even being brave enough to accept her award for ‘Worst Actress’. “First of all, I want to thank Warner Brothers,” she started in her acceptance speech, “Thank you for putting me in a piece of shit, god-awful movie… It was just what my career needed”.
Yet, despite the film’s reputation, she doesn’t regret her involvement, later stating: “Everybody around me said, ‘Girl, don’t do it. It’s going to be the death of you. It’s going to end your career.’ But guess what I did? I followed my intuition and I did a movie called Catwoman and it bombed miserably…While it failed to most people, it wasn’t a failure for me because I met so many interesting people that I wouldn’t have met otherwise, I learned two forms of martial arts and I learned not what to do”.
But there is one thing that shouldn’t be forgotten, and it resides in Berry’s final line on the matter. Yes, Catwoman will always remain a blot on Berry’s career. For every degree of appreciation she receives, a counterbalance of the legendary catsuit and whip will undoubtedly be added to the opposite side of the scales. However, the movie also offers a rock bottom form from which to leap up.
The picture provided Berry with a position from which to never return. After Catwoman, Berry would never again let herself be dragged into an unwieldy franchise, or an apparent money-spinner that doesn’t have enough script to make it feel anywhere near worthwhile. So while it might be a movie Berry would rather forget, remembering it provides a good career balance.
