by Gill Pringle at (virtual) Toronto International Film Festival
As a former model, Halle Berry has always refused to be just another pretty face. Continuously defying expectations, in 2001 she became the first African American actress to win a best actress Oscar with Monster’s Ball and, this weekend, she shattered another personal glass ceiling by selling her debut directorial film, Bruised, to Netflix.
“I knew early on, as an African American actor I would have to shed this physical self and put on display my acting skill,” Berry, 54, tells FilmInk at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival where Bruised was screened as a work in progress before netting a US$20 million global distribution deal with the streaming giant.
Doing double duties as director while starring as a washed-up MMA fighter struggling for redemption as both an athlete and a mother, her beautiful features are frequently masked by bruises and injuries.
The former Miss U.S.A. Pageant runner up has regularly chosen to hide her beauty throughout her entire dramatic career, from her debut film role in Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever.
“Spike wanted me to read for the part of his beautiful wife but when I read the script, I immediately thought I want to play Viv the crack addict. That felt like something I could sink myself into and start to shed this physical self which had defined me at the time.
“Luckily for me, Spike gave me a chance to do that. I can’t say he saw it right away, but eventually he came to see I could do it. He also realised: What does one look like who’s effected by crack? It doesn’t discriminate. Crack is gonna effect whoever its gonna effect,” recalls the actress who initially wanted to be a journalist.
“I have always known that I am more than the shell that I walk around in. I had hardship growing up in an environment where I didn’t always feel like I fitted in so I knew that I was full of substance with stories to tell and had to somehow find a way to get other people to see me that way.”
Jungle Fever provided the opportunity she craved. “I felt from that moment on, that I could be seen as more than just a pretty face or more than a model turned actor,” she says.
As Bruised’s Jackie “Justice” she is, again, barely recognisable as a woman struggling to regain custody of her six-year-old son while working multiple jobs, barely scraping by since losing an important match years ago.
Discussing Michelle Rosenfarb’s script about a 20-something white MMA fighter. “I knew what was written could not be me but what I loved about the story was that it was a classic fight film and, throughout history, people love to root for the underdog.
“My job was to convince the producers who had the rights to this story, to let me re-imagine it for a middle-aged black woman and how I could play this fighter and tell this story,” she recalls.
“I loved the fractured and brokenness of this character and I love to see a film that’s about redemption. I want to see the human spirit soar. I think that’s what most people relate to because we all struggle.”
Meeting with several directors, she felt nobody saw the material quite as she did, eventually taking the plunge on directing it herself.
“I knew I was going to work harder than I ever have in my entire life on this character and that the last thing I wanted was for all that work to be for naught and fall into the hands of a visionary who didn’t quite see it the way I saw it.”
Admittedly she was “scared shitless” once on set. “Any director will tell you that they’re scared going in and if they don’t tell you that, they’re not telling the truth. Fear and worry are healthy because it means you want to do your best.”
Even a couple of broken ribs she received from a fight scene didn’t slow her down. “The director in me said, ‘We’ve got to keep going. We can’t stop’,” recalls the former Catwoman star whose roles include John Wick 3, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Cloud Atlas, The Flintstones and Swordfish.
Berry’s harrowing Bruised role brings to mind the qualities which helped her earn the best actress Oscar two decades earlier, starring opposite Heath Ledger and Billy Bob Thornton in Monster’s Ball.
“I am always most drawn to characters who are fractured and broken, who are fighting to survive; the underdog or the misunderstood character, the dark horse in the race.
“I think, in many ways, it speaks to some of my own brokenness and my own life experience. Every time I get to act in any of those kind of roles, I get to have a cathartic experience and have some healing for my own self and to share parts of myself that are hidden,” says the former Bond girl who played Storm in The X-Men franchise.
Her two children, she says, keep her grounded. “Since I became a mom 12 years ago, there’s nothing more grounding than having children and being a mother. That’s kept me very centre and very clear about what’s important in life – and what’s not important in life. They force me to be the best version of myself because I know they’re always watching,” says the thrice-wed actress.
Launching her own production company 606 Films in 2014, she talks about gaining creative control. “It was out of a desire to tell more stories about not only women but women of colour and realising that if we don’t do that for ourselves, chances are it wasn’t going to happen.”
Love has always been a throughline for Berry. “We don’t always know where we will find that and I’ve always been an advocate for not putting limits or boundaries around where and how you find love. Love is love and we can’t always dedicate where we find it but one thing I know for sure is – we all have the need and we all search love out. It’s part of being human and part of what makes us feel alive and helps us to grow and evolve.”
