Halle Maria Berry (born Maria Halle Berry;
August 14, 1966) is an
American actress, film producer, and former fashion
model. She won an Academy Award for Best Actress in 2002 for her performance in
the romantic drama Monster's Ball (2001), which made her the only woman of
color to win a Best Actress Academy Award to date, as of 2016.
Happy 50th birthday Halle. |
Berry was one of the highest paid actresses
in Hollywood during the 2000s and has been involved in the production of
several of the films in which she performed. She is also a Revlon spokesmodel.
Before becoming an actress, she started modeling and entered several beauty
contests, finishing as the 1st runner-up in the Miss USA Pageant and coming in
6th place in the Miss World Pageant in 1986. Her breakthrough film role was in
the romantic comedy Boomerang (1992), alongside Eddie Murphy, which led to
roles in films such as the comedy The Flintstones (1994), the political
comedy-drama Bulworth (1998) and the television film Introducing Dorothy
Dandridge (1999), for which she won the Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award for
Best Actress, among many other awards.
In addition to her Academy Award win, Berry
garnered high-profile roles in the 2000s such as Storm in the X-Men film series
(beginning in 2000), the action crime thriller Swordfish (2001), and the spy
film Die Another Day (2002), where she played Bond Girl Jinx. She then appeared
in the X-Men sequels, X2: X-Men United (2003) and X-Men: The Last Stand (2006).
In the 2010s, she appeared in movies such as the science fiction film Cloud
Atlas (2012), the crime thriller The Call (2013) and X-Men: Days of Future Past
(2014).