The 'Monster's Ball' actress feels sad that she's still the only African-American star to win Best Actress at the Academy Awards because she thought her 2002 victory 'meant something.'
- Dec 8, 2023
AceShowbiz - Halle Berry laments that her Oscars success hasn't become a turning point for the movie industry. The 57-year-old star was the first - and thus far only - African-American woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2002 for her performance in "Monster's Ball", and Halle feels sad that her success hasn't been repeated by other black actresses.
"It's been 21 years now and no one else like me has walked through that door. That is a great sadness because I felt that night meant something," she told Variety.
Despite this, Halle acknowledged that Hollywood has seen some "change" over the last 21 years. The actress explained, "Awards aren't everything. We are working in the industry in a way we never worked, so there has been change and it did matter."
Halle launched her own production company, 606 Films, back in 2014, and she's claimed that it's helped to "move the needle" in Hollywood. She said, "[Winning the Oscar] didn't do for me what it did for others, which goes back to being a black woman. But my production company did move the needle. I get to do what I want, turn ideas into screenplays and decide the producers I work with."
Halle previously claimed that a lack of recognition shouldn't detract from the hard work and talent of other black actresses. The film star told the New York Times newspaper, "We can't always judge success or progress by how many awards we have."
"Awards are the icing on the cake - they're your peers saying you were exceptionally excellent this year - but does that mean that if we don't get the exceptionally excellent nod, that we were not great, and we're not successful, and we're not changing the world with our art, and our opportunities aren't growing?"
