Halle Berry Cried Hard When She Realized She Wasn’t Being Fired From This Tom Hanks Film
Tom Hanks and X-Men star Halle Berry collaborated for the this 2012 sci-fi epic. But Berry thought her opportunity to work alongside Hanks was short-lived thanks to an unexpected onset mishap.
Halle Berry thought she’d end up being fired from this Tom Hanks movie
Berry and Hanks played multiple roles in the 2012 movie Cloud Atlas. The film was directed by the Wackhowski sisters, and followed the stars’ characters throughout multiple time periods. As fond as Berry was of the project, she was worried that an onset accident cost her the film role. The Oscar-winner expected the Wachkowskis to fire her after she broke her foot.
“The day after it happened, I heard, ‘Lana and Andy want to come see you,’ and I thought, oh God, they are surely going to give me my papers, send me packing and bring in somebody else,” Berry once told Observer.
But the exact opposite happened, which left Berry feeling sentimental.
“I never was so touched and never had I cried so hard when they came to me and said, ‘No, it’s just a bump in the road, we’re going to fix this.’ I couldn’t believe it because so many actors, so much scheduling had gone on for years to make this all work, and they were willing to say, ‘We’ll throw it all in the wind, we want you to stay on this movie and we’re going to work it out,’” Berry recalled.
How Halle Berry and Tom Hanks got involved in ‘Cloud Atlas’
Cloud Atlas is based on the 2004 novel of the same name by David Mitchell. The film spent a couple of years in limbo before officially being developed. This was in no small part thanks to Berry and Hanks. Neither actor needed to audition for the film. The film’s directors felt the movie needed considerable star-power to be made in the first place. It was believed that the combination of Hanks and Berry could bring Cloud Atlas to the big screen.
“I think both [Halle and I] were in the position where we said, ‘We’re in! Does that help you? I’ll do it!’ And that was two and a half, maybe three years before we got around to actually saying, ‘Okay, we’ve got the money.’ I’d get calls from them, every six months, saying, ‘We’re plugging away. We’re almost there.’ I’d say, ‘Well, I’m standing by! Let me know,’” Hanks once recalled to Collider about the film’s developmental process.
The Monster’s Ball star was told to avoid reading the book when she was offered the role, and just stick to reading the screenplay. She was convinced to hop on board the project afterwards, but was more attracted to the collaborative feel of the movie.
“It felt like it was a classic ensemble. Every character, every part that everybody had to play was equally important to telling the story that the filmmakers had in their minds, that was most important,” she said. “They had to take David Mithchell’s book and put it into a cohesive story that would translate to screen, one that hopefully audiences would want to follow along with. I was honored that they called me up and said, ‘We want you for it.’”
Tom Hanks considered ‘Cloud Atlas’ 1 of his top 3 favorite films
Hanks once mentioned that there were only a handful of films in his career that he was proud of. Cloud Atlas might have been one of them. The movie was far from Hanks’ most successful movie financially, and its box-office numbers were well below expectations. It also received very mixed reviews critically. But Hanks ranked the film as one of his favorites because of his onset experiences.
“We shot it on a hope and a dream and nothing but a circle of love,” Hanks said on Bill Simmons. “That was the first time I’d ever shot extensively in Germany and I was surrounded by history. But the work itself, we were part of this big, massive ensemble of fantastic people who were just trying to do the hardest, best work on a deep throw…that whole movie was such a deep throw that making it was magical.”
