Halle Berry

Halle Maria Berry, born August 14, 1966, in Cleveland, Ohio, to an English-Irish American father and an African American mother, is an Academy Award-winning actress and director who became the first African American woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress in film history — one of the most significant milestones in the history of the Academy Awards — and who has built a career of remarkable commercial range across romantic comedy, superhero franchise, action, and serious drama spanning over thirty years. Growing up in Cleveland after her parents' divorce when she was four, Berry was raised by her white mother Dorothy and experienced the racial tensions and social complexities of a mixed-race identity in 1970s and 1980s Ohio with a directness that she has described as formative. She worked as a model in Chicago before moving to New York and breaking into television, making her film debut in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever (1991) as a drug-addicted character for which she famously refused to bathe during production to maintain authenticity. She rose to mainstream stardom through Boomerang (1992) opposite Eddie Murphy, The Flintstones (1994), Losing Isaiah (1995), the Bond film Die Another Day (2002) as the iconic Jinx, and the X-Men franchise (2000-2014) as Storm — a role she played across seven films. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Monster's Ball (2001), directed by Marc Forster, delivering a performance of nakedly physical and emotional vulnerability that silenced those who had questioned whether she could carry a serious dramatic film. Her directorial debut Bruised (2020) earned significant critical attention. She is an outspoken advocate for domestic violence survivors and has used her platform to fund relevant nonprofit organizations.