The first African American woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress ever, Halle Maria Berry, is an American actress and former model. The 55-year-old actress began her career as a model and entered several beauty contests, finishing as the first runner-up in the Miss USA pageant and coming in sixth in the Miss World 1986.
Recently, the actress was spotted on ABC’s Soul of a Nation Presents: Screen Queens Rising special, where she talked about her historical 2002’s Oscar win. She addressed the fact that despite being two decades since her win, she is surprised and sad that no other Black woman has won the honor.
She disclosed her thoughts to ABC and said, “You know, I’ve been asked this question so many times as if I should have the answer. But I don’t. But I will say this: I do feel completely heartbroken that there’s no other woman standing next to me in 20 years.”
She further added that her win meant a lot to her people and how everyone believed that things would change and that there would be other Black women sharing this same honor with her.
She opened up about how she thought that her career would change and said, I thought that I would have the script truck back up to my front door and I’d have an opportunity to play any role I wanted. That didn’t happen. But what I do know happened that night is that so many people of color got inspired. When I look around and I see my brothers and sisters working and thriving and telling their own stories from their point of view. I’m proud of that, and I see the movement forward. And I think that night inspired so many of those people to dream those dreams.”
Her career in the film industry began in 1992 when she made her debut in the romantic comedy Boomerang, after which the actress was seen in movies like The Flintstones, Bulworth before being part of a television film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge in 1999 for which she received Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award.
Flintstones’ famed actress gained worldwide recognition when she portrayed the mutant superhero Storm in the film adaptation of the comic book series X-Men. In 2001 she landed a role in Monster’s Ball in which she played the role of Leticia Musgrove, the troubled wife of an executed murderer for which the actress was awarded the National Board of Review and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress and became the first African American woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Hopefully, the situation will change in the coming future and the women who are working and thriving and telling their stories will get the same opportunity and platform as Berry did.
