Truth is Halle Berry wants to put the past few months behind her. Why?
She recently pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge in an L.A Superior Court after a Feb. 23 Sunset Blvd. car accident. Berry, who was put on unsupervised probation and ordered to pay $13,500 in fines, is also being sued by the driver of the other car.
On a more optimistic note, Berry is featured as the mutant superhero Storm in Bryan Singer's X-Men, which opens Friday.
It's the $75-million sci-fi fantasy version of the Marvel Comics series that was filmed in and around Toronto from September to February. In the picture, mutant good guys battle mutant bad guys as non-mutant humans fear them both.
X-Men good guys include the weather wonder distorter Storm (Berry), the optic-attacking Cyclops (James Marsden), the power-absorbing Rogue (Anna Paquin), the telepathic Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), feral-like, self-healing Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and the brains behind the X-Men operation, the wheel-chair bound Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart).
On the bad team ...
The bads? The master of magnetism Magneto (Ian McKellen) has his Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants -- the vicious mauler Sabretooth (Tyler Mane), the shape shifter Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) and the agile Toad (Ray Park).
It is Wolverine's journey from the "Canadian" backwoods to enrolling in Prof. X's X-Men Academy which introduces moviegoers to the heroes and later the villains.
"I'm amazed they got it together so fast ," says 33-year-old Berry by phone from New York. "I feel like we just finished shooting."
In fact, it was just last year about this time Berry was up for the part, encouraged by the fact that stalwarts Stewart, McKellen and Paquin had already signed up.
"When I finally got it, I was embarrassed to say I didn't know much about X-Men, but then I found out nobody else in the cast did either," Berry recalls.
In the end, the lack of background helped the actors focus on their characters as defined by the script, not X-Men's complicated past developed since the comic first appeared in 1963.
"The characters have taken so many turns from good to evil, so for me it was helpful not to have all the back stories I wasn't using," she says. "I have heard that Storm's one of the most beloved characters. I feel the pressure. I hope I can do her justice."
Used to winter
So what about her mostly winter shoot in Toronto? "Hey, I grew up in Cleveland on Lake Erie, so I know all about Toronto weather," says Berry, who divorced baseball player David Justice three years ago.
Meanwhile, Berry is working as producer only on the pre-production for a Showtime telefilm, Band Of Angels. "I don't want to be the dancing bear all the time."
She's also considering a few high profile movie parts that start up in September, although she won't confirm what they are. Berry will say that her offers are getting better since her acclaimed HBO production, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge.
"My acting life did change after doing Dorothy," she suggests. "I felt like I had a lot to prove. Now I think I get a different kind of respect."
The Dorothy Dandridge role also gave her the courage to try something like X-Men. "I would have felt that it was too risky for me before," she says. "Maybe a little too frivolous for a former model turned actress."
Now that she's immersed herself in the superhero world, what special powers would Berry like to possess?
"Being an actress," she says, "I'd like to read minds, to know what people are thinking in this industry, because there is so much dishonesty out there."
That's a truth, too.
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