57 Facts About Halle Berry

1.

Halle Berry began her career as a model and entered several beauty contests, finishing as the first runner-up in the Miss USA pageant and coming in sixth in the Miss World 1986.

2.

Halle Berry won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance of a struggling widow in the romantic drama Monster's Ball, becoming both the only Black woman and the first woman of color to have won the award.

3.

Halle Berry launched a production company, 606 Films, in 2014 and has been involved in the production of a number of projects in which she performed, such as the CBS science fiction series Extant.

4.

Halle Berry was formerly married to baseball player David Justice, singer-songwriter Eric Benet, and actor Olivier Martinez.

5.

Halle Berry has two children, one with Martinez and another with model Gabriel Aubry.

6.

Halle Berry's name was legally changed to Halle Maria Berry at the age of five.

7.

Halle Berry's parents selected her middle name from Halle's Department Store, which was then a local landmark in Cleveland.

8.

Halle Berry's mother worked as a psychiatric nurse, and her father worked in the same hospital as an attendant in the psychiatric ward; he later became a bus driver.

9.

Halle Berry has been estranged from her father since childhood, noting in 1992 that she did not even know if he was still alive.

10.

Halle Berry's father was abusive to her mother, and Berry has recalled witnessing her mother being beaten daily, kicked down stairs, and hit in the head with a wine bottle.

11.

Halle Berry grew up in Oakwood, Ohio, and graduated from Bedford High School, where she was a cheerleader, honor student, editor of the school newspaper, and prom queen.

12.

Halle Berry worked in the children's department at Higbee's Department store.

13.

Halle Berry was the 1986 Miss USA first runner-up to Christy Fichtner of Texas.

14.

Halle Berry's interview was awarded the highest score by the judges.

15.

Halle Berry was the first African-American Miss World entrant in 1986, where she finished sixth and Trinidad and Tobago's Giselle Laronde was crowned Miss World.

16.

In 1989, Halle Berry moved to New York City to pursue her acting ambitions.

17.

That same year, Halle Berry had her first co-starring role in Strictly Business.

18.

In 1992, Halle Berry portrayed a career woman who falls for the lead character played by Eddie Murphy in the romantic comedy Boomerang.

19.

Halle Berry was in the live-action Flintstones movie playing the part of "Sharon Stone," a sultry secretary who attempts to seduce Fred Flintstone.

20.

Halle Berry tackled a more serious role, playing a former drug addict struggling to regain custody of her son in Losing Isaiah, starring opposite Jessica Lange.

21.

Halle Berry portrayed Sandra Beecher in Race the Sun, which was based on a true story, shot in Australia, and co-starred alongside Kurt Russell in Executive Decision.

22.

Halle Berry starred alongside Natalie Deselle Reid in the 1997 comedy film B*A*P*S.

23.

In 1998, Halle Berry received praise for her role in Bulworth as an intelligent woman raised by activists who gives a politician a new lease on life.

24.

Halle Berry's performance was recognized with several awards, including a Primetime Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award.

25.

Halle Berry portrayed the mutant superhero Storm in the film adaptation of the comic book series X-Men and its sequels, X2, X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men: Days of Future Past.

26.

In 2001, Halle Berry appeared in the film Swordfish, which featured her first topless scene.

27.

Halle Berry appeared as Leticia Musgrove, the troubled wife of an executed murderer, in the 2001 feature film Monster's Ball.

28.

Halle Berry's performance was awarded the National Board of Review and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress; in an interesting coincidence she became the first African American woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress.

29.

Many in the African-American community were critical of Halle Berry for taking the part.

30.

Halle Berry asked for a higher fee for Revlon advertisements after winning the Oscar.

31.

Lindy Hemming, costume designer on Die Another Day, had insisted that Halle Berry wear a bikini and knife as a homage.

32.

Halle Berry was hurt during filming when debris from a smoke grenade flew into her eye.

33.

Halle Berry starred in the psychological thriller Gothika opposite Robert Downey, Jr.

34.

Halle Berry appeared in the nu metal band Limp Bizkit's music video for "Behind Blue Eyes" for the motion picture soundtrack for the film.

35.

Halle Berry received her second Primetime Emmy Award nomination for her role.

36.

The Hollywood Reporter nevertheless described the film as "a well-wrought psychological drama that delves into the dark side of one woman's psyche" and found Halle Berry to be "spellbinding" in it.

37.

Halle Berry next made part of a large ensemble cast in Garry Marshall's romantic comedy New Year's Eve, with Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Biel, Robert De Niro, Josh Duhamel, Zac Efron, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Sofia Vergara, among many others.

38.

In 2012, Halle Berry starred as an expert diver tutor alongside then-husband Olivier Martinez in the little-seen thriller Dark Tide, and led an ensemble cast opposite Tom Hanks and Jim Broadbent in The Wachowskis's epic science fiction film Cloud Atlas, with each of the actors playing six different characters across a period of five centuries.

39.

In 2014, Halle Berry signed on to star and serve as a co-executive producer in CBS drama series Extant, where she took on the role of Molly Woods, an astronaut who struggles to reconnect with her husband and android son after spending 13 months in space.

40.

Halle Berry provided uncredited vocals to the song, "Calling All My Lovelies" by Bruno Mars from his third studio album, 24K Magic.

41.

Kidnap, an abduction thriller Halle Berry filmed in 2014, was released in 2017.

42.

Alongside Daniel Craig, Halle Berry starred as a working-class mother during the 1992 Los Angeles riots in Deniz Gamze Erguven's drama Kings.

43.

Halle Berry is, as of February 2019, executive producer of the BET television series Boomerang, based on the film in which she starred.

44.

Halle Berry made her directorial debut with the feature Bruised in which she plays a disgraced MMA fighter named Jackie Justice, who reconnects with her estranged son.

45.

Halle Berry received a positive review from Deadline for her performance.

46.

Halle Berry dated Chicago dentist John Ronan from March 1989 to October 1991.

47.

Halle Berry contended that the money was a gift, and a judge dismissed the case because Ronan did not list Halle Berry as a debtor when he filed for bankruptcy in 1992.

48.

Halle Berry has never named the abuser, but said that he was someone "well known in Hollywood".

49.

Halle Berry first saw baseball player David Justice on TV playing in an MTV celebrity baseball game in February 1992.

50.

Halle Berry married Justice shortly after midnight on January 1,1993.

51.

In May 2000, Halle Berry pleaded no contest to a charge of leaving the scene of a car accident; she was sentenced to three years' probation, fined $13,500, and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service.

52.

Halle Berry married her second husband, singer-songwriter Eric Benet, on January 24,2001, following a two-year courtship.

53.

In November 2005, Halle Berry began dating French-Canadian model Gabriel Aubry, whom she had met at a Versace photoshoot.

54.

On November 29,2012, Halle Berry's lawyer announced that Halle Berry and Aubry had reached an amicable custody agreement in court.

55.

In June 2014, a Superior Court ruling called for Halle Berry to pay Aubry $16,000 a month in child support as well as a retroactive payment of $115,000 and $300,000 for Aubry's attorney fees.

56.

Halle Berry started dating Grammy winning American musician Van Hunt in 2020, which was revealed through her Instagram.

57.

Halle Berry took part in a nearly 2,000-house cellphone-bank campaign for Barack Obama in February 2008.