Oscar Rewind: A Bittersweet Breakthrough For Halle Berry


Halle Berry had not taken herself into account.

It was a cool March night in Hollywood in 2002, and she was thrilled to be nominated for her first Academy Award for best actress for her role as a waitress in Marc Forster’s movie who had an affair with her convicted husband’s executioner. dark drama “Monster Ball.”

Across Nicole Kidman (“Moulin Rouge”), Judi Dench (“Iris”), Sissy Spacek (“In the Bedroom”) and Renée Zellweger (“Bridget Jones’s Diary”), Berry is only the seventh African-American actress to be nominated. One win would have smashed him into the annals of history as the first Black winner.

But Berry never thought it would happen.

“In those days, if you didn’t win the Globe, you really didn’t get the Academy Award,” Berry, 55, told Spacek, referring to the Golden Globe he lost. “So, I pretty much gave in to the belief that ‘It’s great to be here, but I’m not going to win’.”

But then the previous year’s best actor winner Russell Crowe opened the envelope and read his name, the camera zooming into his aged, shocked face. She took a moment to collect herself, then walked onto the stage in her now iconic Elie Saab gown, clapping and continuing as the bulky burgundy train trailed behind her.

“Oh my God,” were his first words when he finally took a breath to speak, tears streaming down his cheeks, his hands shaking as he held the figurine. He had not prepared a speech. He didn’t have a list of people to thank, either.

“I have no memories,” Berry said. “I don’t even know how I got there. It was a moment of total blackout. All I remember is Russell Crowe saying, ‘Breathe, man.’ Then I had a golden statue in my hand and I started talking.”

He dedicated the moment Dorothy DandridgeIn 1955, she became the first African-American woman to be nominated for best actress (for “Carmen Jones”), and Diahann Carroll and Angela Bassett.

“This moment is so much bigger than me,” Berry told the crowd, “that this door has been opened tonight, for every nameless, faceless woman of color who has a chance now.”

At one point, he looked out onto the balcony and saw Sidney Poitier, who in 1964 was the first Black man to win an Academy Award for best actor for “Lilies of the Field,” and was there that night. honorary award.

“It was very special for him to be there,” Berry said in an interview a few weeks after he died in January at the age of 94. Cleveland could do that.”

When the orchestra signaled him to hang up after about three minutes, he resisted.

“It’s been 74 years,” she said on stage, referring to all the ceremonies where a white actress won an award. “This time I have to.” (At four hours and 23 minutes, it would be an evening of long speeches, the longest Oscar ceremony ever.)

Moments later that night made it back into the history books: Denzel Washington became the second African American win the best actorTwo of the best acting awards were given to actors of color for their role as the crooked cop in “Training Day,” which held the 2002 ceremony for the first and only time.

However, in the 20 years since that night, only 12 Black actors have won Oscars. While two men – Jamie Foxx and Forest Whitaker – have joined the African-American best actor winners rankings, no other Black women have been named best actress, and it took eight years for another Black woman to even be nominated in the category after Berry won. (Gabourey Sidibe for “Precious” in 2010).

“He didn’t open the door,” Berry said. “It’s heartbreaking to have no one standing next to me.”

Mia L. Mask, professor of film at Vassar College and author of “Divas on Screen: Black Women in American Film,” said Berry’s victory was particularly notable because it came with a scarcity of quality roles for Black men, or even fewer. For black women.

“For a woman of color to win, the film itself has to be a good one and meet the sensibilities of academia,” she said. “And performance should be good.”

He noted that, as in both episodes where black actors won Oscars before Berry, the roles historically available to African-American artists were isolated characters largely dependent on white philanthropists: Hattie McDaniel’s Mammy in Gone with the Wind. and Poitier’s mechanic in “Lilies of the Field.”

The sensual nature of the central “Monster Ball” relationship between Berry’s character Leticia and Billy Bob Thornton’s character, Hank, a white correctional officer, was the target of criticism from another Black actress, Angela Bassett, who told Newsweek in June 2002. She had turned down the role as “she wasn’t going to be a prostitute in the movie.” (Bassett did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)

“I wasn’t jealous of Halle’s success,” Bassett said, adding, “I couldn’t do that because it’s just too many stereotypes about Black women and sexuality.” (Tom Ortenberg, president of Lionsgate Films, which produced the film, later said Bassett had not been offered the role of Leticia, who was not a prostitute.)

Today’s audiences are more inclined to inventions of the “Monster Ball” than they were 20 years ago, particularly in the strikingly underpopulated restaurant and prison scenes, even in rural Georgia, Mask said. There is no church, school, or civic group in Berry’s character that he would even consider joining.

“It’s unbelievable that a young woman—especially as attractive as Berry’s Leticia—is living in solitary confinement without any Black community,” she said.

In a 2004 article in the Film Quarterly, Mask noted that the film, set in a Georgia town in the 1990s, was also problematic in the context of American race relations because of its voyeuristic take on the sexuality of working-class women.

“Many viewers interpreted the film’s sex scenes as reproducing the pornographic view of the Black female body and thus restigmatizing Black feminine sexuality,” he wrote.

Berry said he was aware of the criticism and would “definitely” take on the role today.

“From the moment I read the script, I loved this character,” he said. “I thought the story was important and it touched me. So if I were to read this today and feel the same way, as I would have thought — absolutely.”

While certainly celebrating his landmark win, Berry said he was determined not to let the pieces he bought change their genre.

“To get the award, you have to stick to whatever brought you to that place,” he said. “And for me it was taking risks and doing things outside of the box.”

But Berry stressed that no African-American winner of the academy’s best female acting award in the past two decades should take nothing from women who have done “miraculous, wonderful work” like Lena Waithe and Viola Davis.

“We can’t always judge success or progress by the number of awards we have,” he said. “The awards are the icing on the cake – your peers say you’re exceptionally perfect this year – but does that mean that if we don’t get an extraordinarily perfect nod, does that mean we’re not great and aren’t successful, and aren’t we changing the world with our art and increasing our opportunities?”

Even more important than the figurine in her bedroom, Berry said, is the work she’s done since then. He recently directed his first film, the mixed martial arts drama she. “Bruised” starting streaming on Netflix in November.

“A Black woman who directed a movie about the fighting genre twenty years ago?” said. “I don’t even think I can wrap my brain around it. This is proof to me that something has changed.”



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