From Family Life
She's played a Bond girl, a mutant and a catwoman. She's won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, an Emmy and all kinds of accolades for her barrier-breaking acting roles. She's been a mainstay on the "most beautiful" lists for more than a decade. And at the age of 40, Halle Berry still has the striking good looks of the 24-year-old ingenue who made her movie debut in Spike Lee's film Jungle Fever.If she doesn't look any older, by her own admission, Berry (who has always had a spiritual, philosophical side) is a lot wiser. Two divorces have left her with a definite opinion about marriage. That's not to say that she's given up on love -- she's been seeing 31-year-old Gabriel Aubry, a French-Canadian model, for more than a year now. The other important person in her life these days is her mother, a retired psychiatric nurse who lives just down the road from Berry's Los Angeles home, where the actress has been spending a lot of her time lately.
Still, her career continues to keep her busy. This month, moviegoers get to see the older, wiser, still-stunning Berry play an investigative reporter in Perfect Stranger, a murder mystery costarring Bruce Willis. The next role she's contemplating is one she hasn't yet tried: motherhood.
RD: Everyone knows you as a woman of grace and accomplishment. But let's go back in time. Tell us about your childhood, which sounds difficult.
Berry: Yeah, but not as difficult as it's been reported. I always had food and clothes. I had a wonderful, responsible parent who loved me.
RD: Your mom raised you and your older sister, Heidi, pretty much on her own, right?
Berry: Yes. She was very strong and independent. Imperfect, as every parent is, but she did the best she could. Did we have our challenges, two little black girls being raised by a white mother? Sure. We didn't have a lot of money, but we had enough. I never remember going without anything that I ever thought I wanted or needed, so somehow she made it all work out.
Berry: That was a challenging part of my childhood -- the missing link. It's hard when you grow up without a father, whether you're male or female, but it's particularly hard for little girls not to have that image of what a man is. It's forced me to struggle with what to look for, because I didn't really have a role model. RD: How do you think that has affected your relationships with men?
Berry: Adversely, obviously. I never had a good image; I was attracted to what I knew, which was usually not what was good for me. RD: Your father died in 2003. Were you ever able to make peace?
Berry: Not while he was here. I was just getting over my anger and sense of betrayal and abandonment. I was getting to the point where I could understand how and why he could do that, and then he died. I have done a lot of healing in his death. I don't think somebody has to be here for you to heal your relationship. RD: After your mother and father split up, your mother moved you and Heidi to a different neighborhood.
Berry: We were living in the inner city in Cleveland. One day when I was in the third grade, my mother drove by the high school where my sister and I would go, and the place was full of graffiti. Instantly, she decided to move us to the suburbs, to what she thought was a better school -- which it was. But she moved us to an all-white environment, and I don't think she really thought how that would affect us. All of a sudden, I went from an all-black neighborhood to an all-white environment. My sister and I were among maybe five black kids at school. RD: How did you cope?
Berry: I was struggling with my identity -- being around all these white people. Where did I fit in? Was I good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, talented in any way? This teacher, Yvonne Sims, one of the only black teachers at the school, was like an angel. She came along when I felt myself going in a direction that could have been really bad. She took me in and loved me, and through her I knew that I was okay and smart and talented. She will always be someone I admire. She's beautiful, a wonderful mother, married 30 years now. Just the epitome of what I would want to be. RD: After high school, you moved to Chicago to pursue a career in modeling. Is it true that when you moved to New York to begin your acting career, you lived in a shelter?
Berry: Very briefly. My modeling career was pretty lucrative, but I gave that up to move to New York to study to be an actor, and I wasn't working for a while. RD: How old were you then?
Berry: I probably was about 21. But a girl had to do what a girl had to do. You can do that when you're 21 and ambitious and your eyes are this big and you don't want to go home.
Taking Care of Herself
RD: Going home would have been what -- a sign of failure?
Berry: There was a defining moment in my life, something that happened with my mother. I don't know if I've ever talked about this before publicly. My mother was always supportive, but she wanted me to go to college and then try to make my dreams come true. When I moved to Chicago, she drove me there, but I don't think she ever thought it would pan out. After a month or two, I ran out of money and called her. I said, Mom, I hate to ask you this, but could you send me some money? I just have rent money; I can't eat this week. And she said no. It was devastating because she had never said no to me for anything. She said, "I'm not going to start this calling home asking Mom for money. No, figure it out or come home." I was so mad. I didn't speak to her for a year and a half, but for that year and a half, I became totally self-sufficient. I vowed never to ask my mother or anybody for anything, ever. And I didn't. When I moved to New York and hit that hard spell, I was determined not to ask anybody, especially her.
RD: Especially her?
Berry: Especially. I could not make that call. But I'm actually grateful she did that, because it taught me how to take care of myself and that I could live through any situation, even if it meant going to a shelter for a small stint, or living within my means, which were meager. I became a person who knows that I will always make my own way.
Berry: One of the most important charities that I'm part of is the Jenesse Center for battered and abused women and ch
RD: Having been through some of the things you have, how do you keep yourself grounded? I've read that you're a big fan of psychotherapy.
Berry: My mother introduced my sister and me to psychology when my father left -- the idea that we needed to work through what this would mean for our lives. I've been in group therapy, and I know the benefit I've gotten from listening to other people tell their stories. I'm not afraid of talking about how I help myself through hard times, because we all go through it. I have a longtime therapist I stay in touch with. Whenever something is going a little off, I check in and say, Hey, let me get your thoughts on this.
RD: People view you as a sister, and your fans want you to have the best life. After you broke up with your last husband, musician Eric Benét, so many people were in your corner. They want you to be happy, to --
Berry: Get it right. Yup. I know that. And I want people to get it right.
RD: Are your eyes watering?
Berry: Not because of him, but because of the love that's sustained me. I love and support women, and women support me, and it does make me teary when I think about it. Women have lifted me and held me up.
RD: In your new film, Perfect Stranger, you play a kind of tortured soul.
Berry: I play a reporter who goes undercover when a friend winds up dead after having an Internet relationship with a stranger. It's sort of a classic whodunit, very Hitchcock.
RD: What is it like to work with Bruce Willis?
Berry: It's fun. Bruce, who happens to live next door to me, has been around a long time, and he's a guy that flies by the seat of his pants. He brings a lot of spontaneity to a script, always trying to make it better, questioning the words on the page. I got a lot out of working with him.
RD: Is there ever a downside to being beautiful in Hollywood like you are? Berry: Beauty is so subjective.
RD: Well, no one thinks you're not beautiful. Berry: You know what I mean. And I can think of worse problems to have. I'm not one who says, Oh, it's hard being me. But, to be honest, it's been harder being a woman of color trying to make it in an industry where there was no place. There was Marilyn Monroe, but there was no place for Dorothy Dandridge, a black woman who was sexy, who wouldn't allow herself to be put in a box. I've struggled with finding a place to be and be comfortable, and that has nothing to do with beauty for me.
ildren in Los Angeles. RD: Is it, again, your own experience that drives you?Berry: Well, I haven't been a battered woman, contrary to what people have written about me. I'm so not a battered woman. Have I been in physical altercations with men? Absolutely. But the minute that happens, they see the back of me. My mother was a battered woman. She was battered by my father. And I have an affinity for children who live in that horror and fear. I'm moved to want to help, especially in the black community where I think sometimes we're forgotten. I know a lot of attention is put on helping children in other countries, and I think that's important. But I also think it's important that we don't forget the children that are right here in our own communities. RD: What goes on at the Jenesse Center?
Berry: We're putting together a plan for women and children to get the tools they need -- education, therapy and counseling -- so they won't ever have to come running to a shelter for battered women and kids. We want to give them some skills.
Evolving as a Person
RD: Have you ever had plastic surgery?
Berry: No, I haven't. But that's one thing I'll never say never about, because I don't know. I hope I will evolve as a person who realizes it's really not about my physical appearance and not be drawn to that seductive knife.
RD: What do you do when you're not working? Do you like to travel?
Berry: I've been working so much lately, the last thing I want to do when I'm off is travel some more. What I want to do is go home, be with my animals. I've got three cats and two dogs. I just want to go where I feel safe, where I feel comfort, where I feel like I can just be me. And my mother is now in L.A., so traveling has become less important the last couple of years.
Berry: Oh, yeah. I hope that happens. It's late; I've waited a little long. But I want to have children. Absolutely. RD: So you're not pregnant, as the tabloids have suggested?
Berry: No, no, no. Trust me, when I'm pregnant --
RD: Everyone will know it?
Berry: There's nothing to hide.
RD: Would you consider adoption?
Berry: Oh, sure. Yeah. RD: I know you're seeing someone new, but I also know you've said many times, I'm never getting married again.
Berry: Never, that's true.
RD: You haven't learned you never say never?
Berry: This I'm 100 percent sure about. I will never -- not in a traditional, formal way -- ever.
Berry: Being committed to someone and professing my love and wanting to spend my life and build a family. I'm very much that person and need that in my life. But never with that dress on, signing that paper and legally being bound to another person. Spiritually, yes, but not legally. No more need to do that in my life.
RD: Is there anything else that you're looking forward to in the future?
Berry: In the past when people asked, Where do you see yourself ten years from now? I would say, Here's where I want to be. Then I realized I was limiting myself to that, and not opening myself up to where I can go. I just want to continue to be happy in myself, which I am today, and give of myself in ways that feel meaningful for me. And the next chapter in my life, I think, will be about parenthood. Waking up and doing movies isn't quite enough anymore. I think the next act for me will be trying to be a good mother.