Halle Berry Once Shared She Felt Torn Down After Winning an Oscar
Halle Berry has been candid about her Oscar win, calling it one of her biggest heartbreaks. Although she cherished the triumphant moment, Berry almost immediately experienced one of the few consequences of winning the trophy.
Halle Berry couldn’t even enjoy her Oscar win for a full day before the teardown
Berry famously won the Oscar for Best Actress in 2002 for Monster’s Ball, becoming the first and only Black female actor to earn this recognition. To this day, many other African-American female Oscar winners have only won in the Best Supporting Actress category. Berry is well aware that her accomplishment hasn’t been replicated by her successors. She admittedly found this heartbreaking.
However, her own Oscar win might’ve been slightly disappointing as well. Winning the prize solidified her as an elite artist to her peers. At the same time, Berry felt she fell victim to the rumored Oscars curse quite early after her victory.
“Everybody talks about the Oscar curse,” she once said in an interview with Vogue. “People win Oscars, and then it seems like they fall off the planet. And that’s partly because a huge expectation walks in the room and sits right down on top of your head. The moment I won the Oscar, I felt the teardown the very next day. I thought, If I’m going down, I’m going down taking chances and daring to risk.”
In a resurfaced interview with Black Film, Berry confided that winning an Oscar didn’t make her career any easier.
“It has made it harder, but it’s only made it harder because of the pressure that comes along with that award,” Berry said. “I had to work really hard in not allowing that pressure to stifle my creativity and stifle my desire to be an individual and do my career my way. So, I worked really hard to not just wait myself out of my career by waiting for another Academy Award-winning role.”
Berry added that if she intentionally tried to duplicate her own Oscars success, she wouldn’t have worked for quite some time.
“I wouldn’t have worked for five years now. I reserve the right to just keep making choices that are new for me, and trying different things, taking risks and chances, trying different genres, I just don’t want to do lofty, Oscar-winning type roles. That was never the plan I had for myself,” she said.
Halle Berry didn’t want anyone calling her if she didn’t receive an Oscar nomination for ‘Monster’s Ball’
Just the Oscar nomination alone moved Berry. She cried in an old episode of The Early Show when she received a reminder of the honor. In the February 2002 interview, Berry recalled she heard about the Oscar win from her manager. Her manager reaching out to Berry was a good sign in itself since she told them not to call her if she wasn’t nominated.
“My manager actually called me. I was wrapping Valentine’s day presents for my daughter, actually, and he called me and he told me,” Berry said.
“Well, I told them if it’s bad news, then don’t call me. If it’s good news, then call me,” she added.
Berry also asserted that her Oscar win wasn’t just a celebration for her but for women in general.
“Women of color aren’t often in my position, so, I’m not only happy for me, I’m happy for an entire group of people, actually, because I know what this means to them as well. So, it’s about all of us right now, and that feels good,” Berry said.
However, Berry wasn’t sure if she’d win the award. At one point, she felt she’d lose it to a much more experienced actor. But to her, the nomination was enough of a win in itself.
“I don’t know what my chances are, and you know what, I don’t even care. I’m just happy to be nominated,” she said.
