Wednesday, Nov. 06, 2002

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

By JEFF CHU

Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2002
Even stars have moms to answer to. Halle Berry's has been on the phone from the U.S. wondering why her daughter did not tell her about an emergency eye operation that the actress allegedly just had in Spain. "She called and said, 'What's going on? You had surgery! Nobody called me!'" Berry says, during a break from filming Die Another Day. "She was wild!" Without reason: the surgery never happened. Berry did make a visit to the doctor after dust got in her eye during an action sequence, but somehow that story metamorphosed en route to the pages of a British tabloid.

A year ago, many people wouldn't have cared. But her Best Actress win at this year's Oscars — for her portrayal of a hapless Death Row-inmate's widow in Monster's Ball — cemented her place on the Hollywood A-list and in the gossip pages. The spotlight has taken some getting used to, and sometimes, it's no better when a journalist is getting her story firsthand. Many tend to harp on the down aspects of her up-and-down life, which she says are "things that happen to everybody" — difficult relationships, a divorce (from baseball player David Justice), a much-talked-about car crash that led to a fine for leaving the scene of the accident — while neglecting to talk about the highlights of her burgeoning career. "Sometimes, I just want to say, 'Hey, did you hear that I won an Oscar? Let's talk about that,'" she says. "What I really need is an ejection seat, so that if the journalists are bad, I can just press a button and they'll go whooooo ... "

It helps that the Cleveland, Ohio, native and former teen beauty queen has tried to insulate herself from what's written about her life. "There was a time when I used to read it all, and I would get really upset," she says. "I ended up wasting a lot of time with hurt feelings and frustration and devoting too much energy to trying to figure out why lies are said or mistruths printed. But I think I've evolved into the kind of person who realizes that I can't control it."

What she can control is her career, which she approaches with the pragmatism of a businesswoman rather than the preciousness of an artistic diva. Acting "is a business," she says. "I've always known that." Mixing big projects — like the Bond film — and small — like Monster's Ball — is key to Berry. "It keeps you balanced, not only psychologically, but also in terms of my career," she says. "Some people are all like, 'It's all about the art.' It's not. I've always believed it's about doing good work but also about being in big movies and getting people to come to the theater to see you."

One of the big challenges, though, has been getting into the movies so that people can come to the theater and see Berry. Her race has been an issue, and that's why she sees her Oscar — the first for a black actress in a leading role — as a milestone, not only for herself as an actor but also for black thespians in general. "As a woman of color, it's been really hard to implement my ideas because I haven't always had the opportunities," she says.

Die Another Day has given her a chance to stretch completely different acting muscles than she had to on Monster's Ball. "The challenge on a movie of this magnitude is stamina. This isn't necessarily an acting exercise so much as an endurance exercise," she says. "You have to work with all the effects and all the trinkets and all the toys — and that requires a lot of you physically." The payoff: visibility to a worldwide audience, important, she says, because "we have to realize that the market is becoming very much a global market. It's very important that we expose ourselves and be exposed to other audiences."

Even before Monster's Ball and Die Another Day, Berry wasn't doing half-bad. She produced and starred in Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, a 1999 TV biopic about the pioneering black actress, for which she won an Emmy, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild award. Die Another Day's director Lee Tamahori asked her to play the mysterious assassin Jinx after spotting her in last year's Swordfish, even though the role was originally written for a Latina. And her schedule for coming months is packed. Right now, she's filming X-Men 2, reprising her role as Storm. Up after that: a reunion with Tamahori for The Guide, an action-thriller with Berry as a Seneca Indian who helps people escape their pasts, and a remake of the 1974 blaxploitation classic Foxy Brown.

She doesn't believe for a second, though, that she can just coast her way through more big projects and to more awards. Life has been enough of a roller-coaster ride — "through the good, the bad and the ugly," she says — to have taught her that much. "People get into situations and have unpleasant times," she says. You just have to battle through, drive on, push ahead — whether in character and out. Jinx, says Berry, "is a fighter. She's a little feisty — and so am I."