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s a teenager, Halle Berry was
already preparing for stardom. In high school, she was a cheerleader, worked on
the school newspaper, made the honour roll and was prom queen. “I was Miss
Everything,” she told Hello magazine.Her self esteem dropped, when after winning the coveted prom queen title, she was accused of stuffing the ballot box and had to share the crown with another girl. Berry says the experience made her all the more determined to prove herself. Berry entered the formal beauty pageant circuit, and by age 18, had won the Miss Ohio Teen pageant, the Miss Teen All American pageant and was first runner-up in the Miss USA pageant in 1986. That same year, she also became the first African-American to represent the U.S. in the Miss World pageant. Prize money from pageants helped pay tuition for college, where she studied broadcast journalism, but Berry soon decided to move to Chicago and pursue a modelling career. Modelling led to an audition for the TV show Living Dolls in 1989. The series didn’t last long, but the exposure helped get her cast on the primetime drama Knot’s Landing. Berry’s breakthrough role in movies came in director Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever, where she played the |
unglamourous part of a drug addict. Offers of bigger roles soon followed, but
despite doors opening to her, Berry still felt she was missing opportunities
due to discrimination.
Growing up the daughter of an African-American father and a white, English-born mother, Berry fought prejudice all her life. “It wasn’t easy being an interracial,” says Berry. “Neighbourhood kids taunted me, calling me ‘zebra’. My mother raised my sister, Heidi and me after my father disappeared when I was four. She was a white lady with blue eyes, raising two little black kids in the 1960s. She’s very, very strong.” Berry’s personal life has had as many ups and downs as her professional one.Married twice, Berry wed baseball player David Justice in 1992, but they split three years later. Then in April, she filed for divorce from second husband, R & B singer Eric Benet. She recently admitted on Oprah Winfrey’s show that Benet had been unfaithful. “I’ll never get married again,” she told the talk show host. Through the pain, Berry has also experienced great success in films like X-Men, X-2, (playing superhero Storm), Die Another Day (as Bond girl Jinx) and Monster’s Ball, which won her the Oscar for Best Actress, making her the first African-American to win in that category. |
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