Halle Berry
Birth name: Halle Maria Berry
Nickname: Hannah Little
Height: 5'7 (1.70 m)
Halle Berry was born on August 14, 1966 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA to African American father Jerome Berry, a former hospital attendant, and Caucasian mother Judith Berry, a retired psychiatric nurse. Halle also has an older sister named Heidi.
Halle first came into the spotlight at 17 years old when she won the Miss Teen All-American Pageant, representing the state of Ohio in 1985 and a year later in 1986 when she was the first runner-up in the Miss USA Pageant. After participating in the pageant, Halle became a model. It eventually led to her first weekly TV series, 1989's "Living Dolls" (1989), where she soon gained a reputation for her on set tenacity, preferring to "live" her roles and remaining in character even when the cameras stopped rolling. It paid off though when she reportedly refused to bathe for several days before starting work on her role as a crack addict in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever (1991) because the role provided her big screen breakthrough. The following year, she was cast as Eddie Murphy's love interest in Boomerang (1992), one of the few times that Murphy was evenly matched on screen. In 1994, Berry gained a youthful following for her performance as sexy secretary Sharon Stone in Flintstones, The (1994). She next had a highly publicized costarring role with Jessica Lange in the adoption drama Losing Isaiah (1995). Though the movie received mixed reviews, Berry didn't let that slow her down, and continued down her path to superstardom. In 1998, she received critical success when she starred as a street smart young woman who takes up with a struggling politician in Warren Beatty's Bulworth (1998). The following year she won even greater acclaim for her role as actress Dorothy Dandridge in made-for-cable's Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999) (TV), for which she won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV Movie/Mini-Series. In 2000, she received box office success in X-Men (2000) in which she played Storm, a mutant who has the ability to control the weather.
Quotes
» "I spent a lot of time with a crown on my head." - on her beauty pageant days.
» "I don't see a white woman. I see a black woman, even though my mother is white. Knowing that has made my life easier, I think."
» "In the X-Men the women are so strong and sexy! We really kick some male butt!"
» "There's art and there's commerce. You have to find a way to mesh the two. It's important to do the little movies just for the love of the art. But it's those big movies that take you around the world and make you globally famous."
» "This moment is so much bigger than me, This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll...It's for the women that stand beside me, Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett, Vivica Fox...and it's for every nameless, faceless woman of color that now has a chance, because the door tonight has been opened." - Upon accepting her Oscar
» "I carried my Oscar to bed with me. My first and only three-way happened that night."
» "...You have to find a way to be sad on every day, in every scene, in every moment. And always try to hide the sadness. And you'll get the essence of who she was." -On Dorothy Dandridge
» "I think it's always best to be who you are."
» "When my husband wears this kind of oil, I'm like a puppy."
» "The worst thing a man can ever do is kiss me on the first date."
» "Secretly part of me has always wanted to try cocaine, but I just couldn't imagine sniffing anything up my nose. It seems like that would hurt."
» "My bay windows looked real good and I thought I was going to go right through them."
» "I thought if he was a drug addict would I be leaving him? Absolutely not. If he was an alcoholic? No way. So I stood by him and prepared to fight. I wanted to save my marriage no matter what. But then I realized it was nothing to do with me."
» "I'll never get married again, not that I won't have a committed relationship and be in love. But I will never marry again. I mean it with every bone in my body. There's no need to now. I had a need before because I wanted to prove I could be a wife, or I wanted that fantasy. I don't need to get married, but I do need a partner. I like to be in relationships and be committed. I don't need to be married for that."
» "It was all true, and it's probably the first time the tabloids got my life right." - about her divorce with Eric Bennet.>
» "By nature, I'm more thin than beefy and buff. I had to eat more than I really like to eat. I had to work out more, and working out is just not my thing to do."
» "The whip is probably the most illusive tool you can play with—but also the most sexy and the most fun. Once you get your first crack you just have to keep crackin"
» "Being thought of as beautiful has spared me nothing. Beauty is meaningless, transitory."
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