BEVERLY HILLS -- Beauty pageant queen. Revlon spokesmodel. Hollywood leading lady.

Halle Berry is one of the most glamorous actresses on screens today.

A crack addict in Jungle Fever. A stripper in Last Boy Scout. Another crack addict in Losing Isaiah.

Berry's roles, however, do not always reflect that stature.

"I'm hardly ever the glamor girl in movies," Berry laments. "I did it once in The Flintstones -- but that was cartoon."

This Friday she takes the stage as her to take the spotlight for a showy turn.

But, generally speaking, the Miss World contestant is usually cast in a down-to-earth role of a flight attendant or journalist.

"I'm not usually the glamorous, sassy leading lady. In Boomerang, Robin Givens was and I was the girl next door."

Never really the "girl next door," Berry has been attracting public attention for most of the decade due to a busy slate of film and TV productions, as well as relationships with Wesley Snipes, Eddie Murphy and former husband David Justice.

Two years after the marriage fell apart comes reports Berry had attended a hometown Cleveland Indians game to watch her outfielder ex.

"Nope. David's mother took a girl that looks like me -- who maybe is his new girlfriend. But you can let people know I'm not back with David."

The actress turned 30 last week and is philosophical about her life so far -- from abusive relationships to growing up the child of an interracial couple in a white neighborhood.

"As an actor -- in order to get certain emotions and express certain feelings -- you always have to draw on your own experience if you're going make it real," Berry says.

"We always use not only the bad times, but the good times as well. All those things have turned out to be great tools for me to use."

She plays one of three women fighting for the estate of doo-wop singer Frankie Lymon in the bio pic Why Do Fools Fall In Love.

Berry's Taylor meets Lymon while The Platters and The Teenagers were performing for Alan Freed's immortal early rock shows.

The couple's on again/ off again relationship was only one of three apparent marriages Lymon entered into from 1956 until his heroin overdose in 1968.

"What woman hasn't been a fool in love?" Berry says, explaining that little research was needed. "I understood the dynamic of loving a man and letting him go, taking him and loving him anyway. I've lived all that."

The rest of the role came easily for her, too.

"The '50s and '60s are periods I had already done work on. I loved the whole period: The clothes, the hairdos ... I wish I was alive in the '50s," she says.

Next, Berry will return to the '50s to produce an HBO movie about the life of another singer, Dorothy Dandridge.

This time a little more preparation will be required, Berry says, because unlike the concert scenes in Why Do Fools Fall In Love, "I'm doing the singing myself."


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