Issue Date: Jan. 20, 2001
Portrait of a Lady
By Touré
She evokes a bygone era of classic elegance. But Halle Berry is definitely new-school.
The world's most beautiful face is not heart-attack beautiful. Rather, it's so-amazingly-easy-to-look-at-it-lulls-you-to-sleep beautiful. Halle Berry's face is all pleasing rounded lines without a single hard angle or deep valley, the result of blessed bone structure. Graceful and delicate, she sits as though she were on a cushion, regal though down to earth. She's supremely ladylike, as only a former beauty queen could be, with a slight tomboy edge you can see in her self-assertive walk and the way she's unafraid to chew gum in public or curse a little. But the face that opened many Hollywood doors also keeps some closed.
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The face won pageants in her native Ohio and a lucrative modeling contract with Revlon, and now it wins her roles in special-effects-filled mega-movies like "X-Men," "Swordfish" and the as-yet-untitled next James Bond installment. Her most successful moment to date was also her most glamorous: the HBO original production Introducing "Dorothy Dandridge," which won her an Emmy. But many in Hollywood saw the face and decided Berry was a lightweight actress.
"I find myself in this gray area where people think I can't do something because they're judging me by my public persona or my modeling background or the fluffy studio movies I do," she says.
Life could change now for Berry, 35, thanks to "Monster's Ball," the new indie drama. Berry has previously worked without makeup, in Spike Lee's "Jungle Fever" and Warren Beatty's "Bulworth." But now she unveils the most complex and challenging character of her career. In "Monster's Ball," Berry plays a poverty-stricken mother in small-town Georgia with a husband (Sean Combs, a k a P. Diddy, a k a Puff Daddy, etc.) in his last days on death row. It's a harrowing portrait of two Southern families linked by the death penalty, as well as one of the most unlikely love stories ever conceived: A corrections officer, played by the perpetually brilliant Billy Bob Thornton, a man who has a hand in Combs' execution, grows out of bigotry as Berry's character, Leticia, allows herself to be loved again.
"There's not enough money in the world that can match knowing there's somebody [out there] that cares about you every day," Berry says over chicken salad and merlot at Le Meridien, a posh hotel in Hollywood, on a recent Thursday afternoon. She is wearing a brown ribbed sweater, jeans and dark brown leather pointed-toe boots. She's got on little jewelry and scant makeup. "Without that, we perish. We need that like the air. That's what Leticia needed. Nobody ever took care of her emotional needs. And here was this guy doing that and not trying to change her. Just accepting her."
As soon as Berry read the script, she knew she wanted the part. "I was about to get on the plane to go to New York," she says, "and I read the script in 45 minutes and called my manager from the plane and said, 'Vince, tell 'em yes. Whoever's in it, say yes!' "
But then came the bad news. "My manager said, 'Oh, I didn't have time to tell you: They don't even want you. They're so against you I don't even wanna tell you. But do you want me to go fight?' I was like, 'Yes! Fight!' "
Director Marc Forster wasn't sure Berry was prepared to go as far as he wanted. More precisely, he wondered about Berry and Thornton's extremely gritty and intimacy-free love scene: Was the actress willing to be naked? "She's a movie star," Forster says, "and I wanted to have a really raw love scene, and I wasn't sure if she'd be comfortable with doing that. But Halle was so accepting and cool with everything. We agreed to give her final cut over that particular scene so we could just shoot it whatever way I wanted and then she could watch the footage and [reject] things she didn't like."
The compromise gave Berry the comfort to be nude but with a completely different tone and texture than in the much-hyped seven seconds of toplessness in her last picture. "Swordfish was exploitive, but so what?" Berry says. "I did it because I wanted to do it, and that's my choice as an artist and as a woman and as a person. This movie, if they see that scene and see titillation, they've missed the whole point. It's a pivotal scene, I think. He's a redneck, and she's angry at everybody, and you have to believe they can come together. And in that scene you see why they are together.
"It's about so much more than sex. It's 'without this I'm gonna die,' not 'I just wanna feel good tonight.' I mean, so many of the scenes are raw and hard to watch, and we thought 'OK, we're gonna go there with every other scene. Why drop the ball here? Either we're gonna make this raw, gritty movie, or we're not. Let's not chicken out anywhere. Let's stay true to it.' "
But right now a serious film in which she could challenge her artistic boundaries is exactly what Berry needed to push her career forward. Her performance already has won her the National Board of Review's Best Actress award. She's also been nominated for a Golden Globe this Sunday, and there's murmuring about the possibility of Berry appearing onstage in March with Oscar.
As her chauffeured Cadillac smooths out of Hollywood and into Bel Air, she speaks about her husband of more than two years, R&B singer Eric Benet. "I finally got it right," says Berry, who divorced baseball star David Justice in 1996. "I've chosen the right person for me. And he's very supportive. Whatever I wanna do, he's cool with. And when we hit hard times, which we have -- I had my accident -- he stood right there by my side and supported me, believed in me."
The accident was the February 2000 collision in West Hollywood. Berry ended up with a concussion and a head wound that would require more than 20 stitches. The other driver suffered a broken wrist. But Berry made a critical error when she drove off and went home without speaking to the other driver or calling the police. She was charged with leaving the scene of an accident, a misdemeanor. She pleaded no contest and was sentenced to a three years' probation, a $13,500 fine and 200 hours of community service.
As a result, she has been pilloried by comedians including Billy Crystal, Chris Rock and Howie Mandel. Yet clearly she's not reluctant to talk about the accident, because she brought it up and spoke about it candidly and at length.
"I feel really good about the resolution," she said. "The whole thing resolved itself in a very fair way, and the truth came out. I pled no contest, and I took a certain amount of responsibility because my body did drive away. I never will tell you I did it purposely, because I didn't -- I don't remember it, so how could I purposely say I did that? -- but the fact is my body drove away. I was bleeding from my head and out of my mind, but I still felt I needed to take responsibility for my actions. I didn't stay there. But I didn't knowingly say, 'I just hit this woman, or this woman just hit me, and I'm just gonna drive home because I don't care.' "
And the incessant teasing? "The jokes don't even faze me anymore. Not that I find it funny now, but I don't take myself so seriously now that it's over. It's like, 'If you wanna use me as fodder for your jokes, then fine. Go ahead. Whatever.' "
Around 3 p.m., the car pulls up in front of a ranch-house-esque building with a trickle of uniformed children and suntanned parents moving in and out. India, Berry's 10-year-old stepdaughter (Benet's daughter with a woman who was killed in a car accident nine years ago) was doing a play. Benet was in South Africa that day, and as a committed parent, Berry wanted to be there.
The night before, she had canceled plans to attend the premiere of "Ali" so she could help India prepare her lines and her thrift-store costume. "When I came into her life, she was 7," Berry says. "At that time girls start to need a mother, and not that Eric wasn't doing everything wonderfully, but he's still a man, so it's been a great thing for both of us. The minute we got engaged, she started calling me Mommy."
All her life Berry never wanted children, but at 30 she suddenly began feeling maternal. "Now that [India has] come into my life, it's totally taken care of that desire I was having. I'm fulfilled. That maternal thing has been fed.
"If I have one of my own body, it won't mean any more to me than she does. It'll be different, but it won't mean more. So if God's wanting that for me and Eric, to have our own, it'll happen. If not, we're very much a family, and I'm very much a mother, and I feel connected in a very real way."
Inside the school there are children scampering everywhere and a video camera-to-performer ratio to rival Oscar night. Parents and kids wave to Berry as she wades through the crowd, but even though this isn't a Hollywood school, no one gawks at the celebrity in their midst. She is pretty much just another parent here. Onstage, India and her 28 fellow fourth-graders rumble through a few select scenes from "My Fair Lady" and vThe Pirates of Penzance." It's a ragtag production where half the kids miss a line or point in the wrong direction, but no one cares because it's all so cute. Most of the kids flub their words, but when India's moment comes, she belts out her part perfectly, articulating every word loud and clear so everyone in the back row knows what she's saying -- a tribute to Berry's coaching.
After the play, India gets a big hug from Berry. "She thought she was gonna barf before the performance," Berry says later, "but when it was over she was excited. I was afraid that her wanting to throw up would scare her away from the stage, but the next play they're doing is Harry Potter, and she wants to try out for Hermione. She wants to be a star." Just like Mom.
Touré, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., last wrote for USA WEEKEND Magazine about dancer Desmond Richardson. Touré is a contributing editor for "Rolling Stone" magazine with a book of short stories, "The Portable Promised Land," due in July.
Cover photo by Anthony Barboza
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