She’s had a rough ride for a couple of years, but it seems that actress Halle Berry is back at the top of her game. Now happily married to musician Eric Benet, and mother to his ten-year-old daughter India, the 33-year-old actress looks set to be in the race for the Oscars, after a critically-acclaimed performance in Monster’s Ball, alongside Billy Bob Thornton.
And that’s not all. Halle has been signed up to play Jinx, the “tigerish” baddie in the latest James Bond flick, with the working title of XX. “It’s great to play a bad girl,” she laughed in a recent interview. “I’ve never done that on film before. We can’t be bad in life otherwise we get in trouble and go to jail, so it’s a thrill to do things in a surreal work, with lots of fighting and bad-ass stuff.”
One move that raised people’s eyebrows last year was Halle’s decision to peel off for the cameras for the first time in the John Travolta vehicle Swordfish. But Halle doesn’t bat an eyelid – anymore. “I was obsessed with wanting people’s approval because so many black people would say, ‘My daughter aspires to be like you. Stay positive,’” she remembers. “So I’d try to stay that way. I’m sure I passed up wonderful scripts because I knew they required nudity. But then I realised it’s not my job to raise those girls.”
Halle does, however, have another job off-screen – raising her stepdaughter India, whose birth mother died when she was an infant. “I don’t feel like a stepmother,” the actress told UK newspaper The Mirror. “I’m a mother. India calls me Mummy and I drive her to school and go to parents’ meetings. I am very much a mother and it’s what my life needed. Before I decide whether to do a film these days, I have to consider India and her schooling. It’s a decision I’m happy to make because, in return, I gain love, joy and a sense of worth – so even if I can’t do a movie it’s worth the trade-off.”
“I have a whole new reason for getting up in the morning and so much joy,” she continues. “My free time is full now. I have a life that feels meaningful and I’ve realised how lonely and uneventful my life really was before.”
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
