The movie that convinced Halle Berry she’d make it as an actor: “This could be what I could do for a living”
Halle Berry has been groundbreaking as an Oscar-winner, box office draw, and member of the X-Men franchise, but the confidence to acquire these roles doesn’t appear overnight, and Berry’s trajectory to success was certainly not an easy one.
It may seem strange to say that someone as successful and recognisable as Halle Berry is ‘underrated’, but it feels like Hollywood has lost sight of one of the most influential actors of the past several decades. Being the first Black actor to win the ‘Best Actress’ trophy at the Academy Awards is reason enough for her name to be etched in history books, even if Monster’s Ball is a film that has garnered various controversies over the years.
Additionally, her Oscar win was surprising beyond being a groundbreaking moment of representation, but because she had been a star who had traditionally appeared in more commercial films that appealed to broad audiences. Even if she had a few misses every now and then, she was a consistent draw who could single-handedly convince people to trek out to see her on the big screen and rake in box office profits.
Getting the opportunity to star in a true ‘event’ film only happens when someone of a great stature is willing to share the screen with an up-and-coming star, and in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, there was no one on Earth more popular than Eddie Murphy, who had transcended his acclaimed role on Saturday Night Live to become a bona fide movie star who was just as popular with white audiences as he was with Black viewers.
Murphy had caught a few strays toward the end of the ‘80s for films like The Golden Child and Harlem Nights, which felt like he had just been repeating himself, but his desire to try something different coincided with Berry’s rise to prominence, as they appeared together in the romantic dramedy Boomerang, which was modelled after the old-fashioned romantic comedies of the 1930s, but it had the edge and humour of a more contemporary film. Although Berry had struggled to recognise what her potential was previously, she said that Boomerang instilled in her a sense of confidence.
“It was only after Boomerang, and movies that I seemed to sort of flourish in, that I realised, ‘Oh, maybe this could be what I could do for a living’,” Berry admitted, “Once that thought set in, then I thought, ‘Oh, maybe I can, you know, get better at this’.”
Berry’s ability to appear in both arthouse and blockbuster titles, while still impressive, is something she described as being completely intentional.
“As I started working, I then devised some sort of plan of knowing that I had to do commercial movies to stay relevant within my industry, but then I also had to do the movies for. the smaller movies, for the art of it,” she said, “You know, to also stay relevant in another way within my industry. So that was my, that is still, my only plan, to try to swing between both of those mediums.”
While she may not be at the centre of the industry anymore, she is still a reliable name who appears in many popular films, and will next be seen this year in Crime 101. Simultaneously, Boomerang is a film that was greeted with only mixed reviews upon its debut, and has subsequently been remembered as a truly groundbreaking cult classic.
