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 Halle Berry |
Diva does not suit her. Halle Berry likes her status as the underdog.
Think less of her and she will try to give you more. Cite her as an Oscar-winning best actress for Monster's Ball (2002) and she will remind you that she also earned a Razzie as worst actress for Catwoman (2004).
"The Razzie actually helped me out in that area," Berry tells Sun Media when asked about the high expectations that winning an Academy Award brings.
"It levelled me. It put me back down where I needed to be and it put me back in a good position. It put me back in that underdog position. I'd much rather operate from down there than from some unrealistic pedestal."
Mission accomplished. At 40 and still routinely described as one of the most beautiful and sexually desirable actresses on screen in Hollywood, Berry shows up in Toronto on her multi-city publicity tour for James Foley's new erotic thriller, Perfect Stranger. No pedestal, no pampering.
Berry, who played Storm in the X-Men trilogy and remains one of only two Bond Girls who also have an Oscar at home, does not need to do this kind of hard slogging for a movie. She could insist on a single weekend in Los Angeles or New York and get it out of the way quickly.
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"I like doing this," Berry counters, referring to one-on-one encounters with the press instead of group interviews or, even worse, those odious mass press conferences that studios organize. "So you can be more present. You don't just go on auto pilot because it's not four straight days in a room of some hotel room." She likes face-to-face conversation, although she is prone to reveal more personal details than most Hollywood stars.
She tells Sun Media that she did the "gratuitous" topless scene in Swordfish to get over her fear of nudity.
"In my life, I'm okay with the naked body and I'm fine when other people are nude. But I had to get over the hangup of (asking): 'What will people say about me or what will they think about me if I decide to bare myself?' So I did it just for that reason. To do it in a big gratuitous way: 'Let's see the tits and move on!'
"And I didn't know this but somehow the universe was bringing that to me because Monster's Ball was coming. And I never would have been able to do that if I had not had this gratuitous little moment in the movie right before."
Berry also recently shocked fans when she told Parade magazine that she tried to commit suicide by gassing herself when her tumultuous marriage to David Justice, then an Atlanta Braves baseball star, fell apart. "I was sitting in my car, and I knew the gas was coming when I had an image of my mother finding me," Parade quotes her as saying.
Seeing that image of her mother Judith Berry, now 67, snapped her out and saved her life. "She sacrificed so much for her children, and to end my life would be an incredibly selfish thing to do," Berry said in the magazine. "It was all about a relationship. My sense of worth was so low. I promised myself I would never be a coward again."
Perfect Stranger is a psychological thriller with Berry and Giovanni Ribisi as muck-raking New York journalists who are out to "get" the inside scoop on a possible murder scandal involving Bruce Willis, who plays a horn-dog executive at a high-end advertising agency. Berry uses her sexual powers to ensnare him.
Willis' character is an easy target, Berry admits with a giggle. "To fall for a girl in a skirt: I mean, that's all it takes."
Right girl, right skirt. But Perfect Stranger is not just about sexual manipulation. Berry has her most morally complex role since Monster's Ball. It is a performance that will tease audiences who expect her just to look gorgeous and play sexy, according to co-star Ribisi.
"To some degree," Ribisi says in a separate interview, "people have the propensity to typecast or categorize (beautiful actresses). Maybe they find some sort of safety in that. But she is so ballsy and so determined to do such a good job. This is an Academy Award-winning actress and that was not by accident.
"And I had so much fun with her. I had so much respect for her because she was so willing to try anything. And I've worked with so many people who are just not like that. They just don't risk anything. But she was right there for the whole thing and I would absolutely do it again with her."
For her part, Berry says she does not want to play it safe. "So you take risks and you take chances and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. The idea for me is to never stop risking, never stop trying something new."
Berry made her feature film debut in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever (1991) as a junkie. After seven years of small roles, she established herself again in Warren Beatty's failed but fascinating political satire, Bulworth (1998). Just a year later, playing the title character, Berry asserted herself as a legit dramatic actress in a TV movie, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999). It told the tragic real-life story of an actress who, like Berry, had parents of two races, African-American and Caucasian. Another year and Berry was an action star in Bryan Singer's X-Men (2000). Another year and she was in her Oscar-winning turn in the racially and sexually charged Monster's Ball with Billy Bob Thornton.
Berry won as best actress on the same night as Denzel Washington won as best actor, making history for African-Americans at the Oscars and opening the door for it being routine and based strictly on merit, like this year. "I feel really good that I was a part of that in a small way," Berry says of breaking down racial barriers. "That feels good."
It is all about the risks, she says. "If you risk big, then you win big. And I wanna win BIG! If you're going to play the lottery, don't you want the chance to win the $400 million lottery, not just the $2,500 lottery? If you're going to play, then play to win. Or don't play!"
But it is more difficult for women to get complex roles than it is for men, Berry says. "I think it is," she says. "That is one big reason why, when I read this script (for Perfect Stranger), I was riveted and went: 'Wow! If I can bring to life the challenges of this character, if I can really find a way to pull it off, this would probably be one of my best characters ever!'
"I saw her as vulnerable yet strong. I saw her as very damaged and tortured on some deep, deep level. But she had an insatiable desire to survive it and to get her power back in life, although not really knowing how to do it.
"I thought, if I could bring these colours to this character and have all these little facts of her personality be apparent, that would be a really fun, full, alive, interesting person. And (she would reflect) the imperfection of what being human is all about, what we all struggle with."