On the evening of March 24, 2002, Halle Berry made history at the 74th Academy Awards after landing her first-ever Oscar for Best Actress whilst simultaneously being the first African-American actress to have done so. If only she knew, her life was going to alter completely after that magical and momentous night, for better or for worse (but mostly worse).
How Halle Berry’s Oscar Win Made Things Worse for Her
The Oscars have long been the gateway to peerless fame and recognition, which in turn, serves as the gilded key to unlocking more and more opportunities in the film industry. But Halle Berry‘s bittersweet (mostly bitter) experience following her historic Academy Award win seems to narrate otherwise. As bewildering as it sounds, it didn’t make her life a dazzling affair of high-profile films and a landmine of jobs. If anything, it left her utterly crestfallen, something which she would later deem “one of [her] biggest heartbreaks” in a Variety interview.
“It didn’t open the door,” Berry, 56, who won the ‘Best Actress’ Oscar for 2001’s Monster’s Ball, told The New York Times about the harsh reality of the matter. “The fact that there’s no one standing next to me is heartbreaking.”
Contrary to what she’d expected to get out of that win, namely a brighter future in the industry and increased opportunities to work with acclaimed filmmakers on big projects, what the Catwoman star was ultimately left with comprised disappointment and a hollowness that she couldn’t put into words.
“Wow, I was chosen to open a door.’ And then, to have no one … I question, ‘Was that an important moment, or was it just an important moment for me?’ […] I thought, ‘Oh, all these great scripts are going to come my way; these great directors are going to be banging on my door.’ It didn’t happen. It actually got a little harder.”
And as for the prospect of her Oscar win acting as a portal for other actresses of color to earn their fair share of recognition, there was no progress on that front either.
The Lack of Diversity Concerning the Oscars Broke Her Heart
Even after two decades, Berry still remains the only actress of African-American descent to have bagged an Academy Award in the ‘Best Actress’ category. Though talented stars like Angela Bassett and Viola Davis have been nominated for one, they’ve never been announced as winners of the accolade. And it is this very dismal condition that left the John Wick 3 star unspeakably upset, the stagnancy standing in stark contrast to her envisioned change that never came.
“To sit here almost 15 years later, and knowing that another woman of color has not walked through that door, is heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking because I thought that moment was bigger than me. It’s heartbreaking to start to think maybe it wasn’t bigger than me. Maybe it wasn’t. And I so desperately felt like it was.”
Though Berry brought in the first Oscar for a Black lead actress, it was Hattie McDaniel who was the very first woman to have won the award, but for a supporting role in 1939’s Gone With the Wind.
Source: People
