June 13, 2001
Hooray for Hallewood
By BRUCE KIRKLAND
HOLLYWOOD -- Actress Halle Maria Berry has created her own cutsey Web site, a place called 'Hallewood' where fans can e-mail her, meet her dogs Polly and Willy, look at her baby pictures, get beauty tips, peek into her clothes closet and groove to her favourite foods.

Those choices include a dinner of grilled tuna with garlic mashed potatoes, a junk food treat of salt & vinegar chips, or an indulgence of butter pecan ice cream.

On a more serious level, we learn that her mom Judith Berry -- who raised her and older sister Heidi in Cleveland after her father Jerome Berry left when Halle was four -- counts among her life's inspirations.

Significantly, on that list Mom joins Oprah, Jodie Foster, her fifth grade teacher Yvonne Sims and Dorothy Dandridge, the bi-racial, Oscar-nominated singer-actress whom Berry played so memorably in the 1999 TV film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. Dandridge committed suicide in 1965.

Berry's own traumas -- including a failed marriage to baseball star David Justice and a hit-and-run accident last year as well as a litany of other troubles before she met and married musician Eric Benet -- had her thinking about suicide, too.

Yet there is something naive and charming about www.hallewood.com. So much so that it is difficult to reconcile that with the Halle Berry who goes topless and later parades around in provocative panties-and-bra in Swordfish, Hollywood's No. 1 boxoffice attraction this week.

But the 32-year-old Berry, a former model who vaulted into the public eye in beauty pageants, says it is all a matter of freedom. The freedom to express her potent sexuality.

"I've never really explored that part of myself on screen before. For so many years, I said: 'No, no, no, no!' A lot of it was about being uncomfortable with myself and being afraid and wondering what people would think. After the last couple of years of my life, I've finally shed myself of those worries."

Playing Dandridge was a watershed, she says. "That helped because I finally got some critical acceptance. I think I had this monkey on my back for so many years to prove I was more than a model. So, with that (awards for the Dandridge film), it freed me up to try some of the things that I always wanted to do. But I had this burning desire to prove something first."

Berry, as reported last week in The Sun, has denied she was paid an extra $500,000 to go topless in Swordfish, although producer Jonathan Krane does claim she was given a bonus, an increase from $2 million to $2.5 million, just for that. Regardless, Berry says the topless scene was in the script and she overcame her fear to do that and other provocative scenes.

"I don't think nudity is ever necessary," she says. "I think you can make every single movie and never show anything and it's fine. I think it's a choice you make and it's a bold choice on our part."

She would do it again in another movie. "Absolutely, I will do it again if a part that inspires me calls for it." Ditto for sex scenes, which prompted her to refuse big roles in the past.

As for the topless controversy, it is no surprise, she says. "Nope, I knew it would happen. I expected it and you (the media) have not let me down."

Far more interesting to her, says Berry, is the colour-blind casting. Berry, whose mother is Caucasian and whose father is African-American, calls herself black and says the role of Ginger in Swordfish could have gone to a woman of any race.

"That's what made me really excited and that's what made me get over the nudity really quickly. I saw this as an opportunity to take a black woman to another place where we haven't gone before. Because that has been my struggle: To just be a woman in a movie and not let the fact that I'm black hinder me from getting parts that my white counterparts are able to play. So this was a big step in that direction."

As for the personalized Web site, Berry says it's a thrill.

"You guys (the media) have always been pretty kind to me, so that's not a bad thing. But it's nice to have an outlet, to have a voice, that's uncut and unedited and I can say what I want to say in its entirety. So it's a really good release for me."

On the Web site, Berry introduces herself in a dreamy letter to fans: "Hallewood is a positive place. It's a place where we can love each other, support one another and offer friendly advice to all those in need. And, if you hang around long enough, it's a place where dreams can come true."

Now, Berry says, her own dreams are coming true.