Just designated as one of People magazine’s Most Beautiful People of 2004, Halle Berry is back in superhero mode for the eagerly anticipated Catwoman, based on the DC comic series (and opening in South Africa on August 13).
“I wasn’t so much a fan of comic books growing up,” she told Entertainment Weekly, “but it’s been a wonderful addition to my career. This Catwoman is more 2004. More stealthy and reflective of the times. And because [the one-name French director] Pitof comes from the world of visual effects, he has a stylised, sophisticated vision.”
Reportedly costing $100-million, Catwoman is the story of a shy, sensitive artist, Patience Phillips, who works as a graphics designer. When Patience inadvertently discovers a dark secret her employer (Lambert Wilson) and his wife (Sharon Stone) are hiding, she finds herself in the middle of a corporate conspiracy. And, in a mystical twist of fate, she is suddenly given the strength, speed, agility and ultra-keen senses of a cat. With her newfound prowess and feline intuition, Patience becomes Catwoman, a sleek creature balancing on the thin line between good and bad. Like any wild animal, she’s elusive and dangerous, particularly when she indulges in a romantic diversion with a police detective (Benjamin Bratt) who is investigating a string of crime sprees plaguing the city.
“Catwoman is very urban, very downtown. She’s not Superman … Catwoman is out to save herself,” Berry reveals. “I have to fight in, like, four-inch heels, and we’re doing capoeira — this style of martial arts that’s Brazilian. It’s all low to the ground, very influenced by gymnastics. That’s challenging. And I’m wicked with the whip. This one’s like eight feet long, and when you get that first crack … Meow!”
On the other hand, as Berry points out, there are some distinct disadvantages to the strenuous role: “I’m on all these protein drinks, and the supplements give you, like, wicked gas.”
Berry has also adopted a calico cat that she’s named Phoebe. To demonstrate vividly how she’s learned to copy the feline gait, the buff star with the bodacious bod sticks out her butt and undulates her hips as she prances in her belly-baring leather suit. “See?” giggles Berry. “She’s a juicy mama.”
Contrary to published reports, however, one animal she did not adopt is the Bengal tiger with whom she appears in Catwoman. Reportedly, Berry was so disgusted with the rumors that she was considering keeping the exotic, endangered animal that she released a statement saying she “would never dream of keeping an animal of that sort out of its natural habitat”.
Yet the idea is not so far-fetched. According to statistics, about 10 000 “pet” tigers reside in American homes, twice as many as those who remain in the rest of the world.
During the Catwoman shoot in Vancouver, British Columbia, Berry endured several accidents. According to a production assistant, she collided with a couple of pieces of equip- ment on set. But it seems Berry is just accident-prone. She fractured a bone in her right arm while filming the psychological thriller Gothika and damaged an eye in Spain on the set of the James Bond action-adventure, Die Another Day.
Still, Berry’s pleased that Ashley Judd turned down the part of Catwoman. Judd — whom sources say originally felt the role was “too immature” for her — admitted to one magazine she now regets her decision. When Judd saw the photographs of Berry in the sexy cat costume, she remarked, “That could have been me!”
In contrast, one actress who has not expressed regrets is Michelle Pfeiffer, who had such low opinions of the Catwoman costume’s comfort level in Batman Returns (1992), that she has subsequently declined all offers to reprise the role.
About any resemblance between her character and the past interpretations of Catwoman, Berry is adamant. First, this 2004 Catwoman is not part of the Batman franchise. It bears no resemblance to Pfeiffer’s or Julie Newmar’s or Eartha Kitt’s versions of the role.
“I’m my own incarnation, not to be confused with or compared to any others … That’s what I struggled with — if I couldn’t bring anything different, then why do it?”
Answering that question is her co-star Sharon Stone, who told Entertainment Weekly no other Catwoman had “the depth of soul and spirit that Halle has. Halle doesn’t do anything without giving her own pathos and meaning. She’s the real deal.”
As for Berry’s off-screen life, the winner of an Oscar for her performance in Monster’s Ball (2001) and face of Revlon is single again. Earlier this year she filed for divorce from her estranged husband Eric Benet, checking the box that says “irreconcilable differences” on the legal petition. After having been married for three years, the couple had split last October amid rumors of the R&B singer’s infidelity. Similar allegations have cropped up continuously in the tabloid press since their wedding day.
Berry remains close to Benet’s young daughter, India, from his previous girlfriend, who was killed in a car crash. Berry formally adopted India and she says no divorce will change her love for the young girl. “I think I’ve been indelibly changed by becoming a mother — having a child in my life,” she told a woman’s magazine. “It’s changed me so much, and I look at life differently … I’ve found ways to laugh and play, which I had sort of lost the ability to do.”
When it comes to new relationships, Berry told American columnist Suzy that “I know the perfect guy doesn’t exist, but I also realise I deserve a certain kind of person, and that I do have a right to be really choosy.”
Presumably, that eliminates Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst, who trekked to Montreal to shoot a sizzling Gothika music video with Berry and came back declaring mysteriously, “Someone has come into my life that I really, really bonded with like I’ve never bonded with anybody.”
Admittedly unlucky in love, Berry muses, “What is it a woman would have to do to get a man to stay faithful? … She has to be a friend. She has to be independent. She has to be somewhat like a lady and shy, yet she has to be a freak in bed. And I wonder: is it just a man thing to go off and roam or, if a man met a woman who was Everywoman, would that keep him committed?
“I’ve made some bad choices where men are concerned,” she goes on. “I used to say that if there was a loser in town, I’d find him. But I don’t say that any more. I’m going to find the right man. When I put on that catsuit, I’m in touch with my power as a woman — I’m reminded that I should use it more often.”
Yet Berry is known for that kind of dogged optimism. Her talent and tenacity have propelled her through many personal and career pitfalls. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, on August 14 1968, she’s the daughter of an African-American father and white mother. “My mother [Judy Berry] raised my sister Heidi and me after my father disappeared when I was four. It wasn’t easy being an interracial,” Berry remembers. “Neighborhood kids taunted me, calling me ‘zebra’. I’m black. I realised very early in my life that I wasn’t going to be this mulatto stuck in the middle. I’m proud of both sides of my heritage, and I don’t feel like I’m denying my mother’s side by agreeing to be part of the black community.
“My mother has been the biggest influence in my life,” Berry goes on. “She was a white lady with blue eyes raising two little black kids in the 1960s. She’s very, very strong. She had to be. She had to learn to make ends meet and make things work out. My mother is just a born survivor. I’m so happy I was able to buy her a ‘dream house’ on Lake Erie.”
At 17, Berry discovered that beauty pageants offered a taste of the spotlight. She was crowned Miss Teen All-America, which led to modelling. She made her television debut on Living Dolls, where she caught the eye of Spike Lee, who cast her as a crack addict in Jungle Fever.
Dubbed “America’s most beautiful black woman” by Jet magazine, she then went on to film The Last Boy Scout; Strictly Business; Boomerang; The Flintstones; Losing Isaiah; Solomon and Sheba; Executive Decision, Bulworth; Why Do Fools Fall in Love?; Swordfish and both the X-Men movies, along with the Golden Globe award-winning TV biography of African-American actress Dorothy Dandridge.
Not surprisingly, Berry had to work hard to battle “the model curse,” fearful that movie executives wouldn’t take her seriously. “Acting is almost like a drug for me,” Berry admits. “It allows me to not focus on what’s going on with me but to focus on something else, and I can forget about my own problems and my own life for that time.”
Berry has had her share of problems. “The first man I ever dumped stalked me. He still harasses me. I don’t want to say his name but he sent me dead snakes in the mail and all kinds of crazy stuff.”
When she was in her 20s, a boyfriend beat her so badly that she lost 80% of her hearing in one ear. When R&B singer Christopher Williams, who dated Berry in the early 1990s, was named as the culprit, he fingered another ex-lover of hers, telling entertainment website Eurweb: “Wesley Snipes busted her eardrum, not me.” All Berry has ever said publicly about Snipes is: “He broke my spirit but not my heart.”
Later Berry was diagnosed with diabetes and endured a messy divorce from her first husband, baseball star David Justice. She had to take out a restraining order against him.
Berry has since admitted that at the time she considered suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. She says she grabbed her two pet Shih Tzu dogs, went into her garage, got into her car and started up the engine. “I sat there for a while and could smell the fumes,” she recalls. “I felt worthless, like such a failure. I worried: what would people think about my marriage being over? Then, as the fumes began to enter the car, I started to think how selfish I was being. I hadn’t thought about my mother one bit. It was a struggle for I don’t know how long. I know I started to pray and made a very serious pact with God that I would never contemplate taking my own life again. Never. Never. Never.”
In February 2000 she ran a red light and slammed into another car, then left the scene of the accident. Berry insists she doesn’t remember the accident, even though she drove home and needed 60 stitches to sew up her forehead. She was sentenced to 200 hours of community service, a three-year probation and $13 500 in fines and penalties.
Last year brought its own slate of emotional hurdles. In January her estranged father died. In July her plans to build a dream house in Beverly Hills crumbled when she discovered that the $2-million property sits on shaky ground with defective soil conditions.
Then, in October, as Berry separated from Benet, she discovered that the eagerly anticipated James Bond spin-off, starring her sexy CIA agent Jinx, had been cancelled by executives at MGM. The studio instructed Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson to stop developing the project.
Berry had been keen on a Jinx movie, saying: “She’s the physical and intellectual equal of James Bond. Bond girls are no longer just concubines. They now have a more equal role … Jinx has such strength and sex appeal and, at the same time, she is very international. I like that about her.”
Rather than dwelling on what might have been, however, Berry wisely makes sure that her schedule is full of exciting projects: “There’s no actress alive, except for Julia Roberts, who can sit back and get great projects thrown her way. She’s the only one who has that luxury.”
So Berry has found The Guide, an action thriller to be directed by Lee Tamahori of Once Were Warriors fame. She will play the intrepid Seneca Indian Jane Whitfield, who uses her ancestors’ psychic powers and her own computer skills to help desperate people escape life-threatening situations by erasing their past and providing them with a brand-new identity.
Plus, she’s working on Nappily Ever After, a romantic comedy adapted from a novel by Trisha Thomas and directed by Patricia Cardoso. It’s a female-driven story, like Bridget Jones’s Diary and Waiting to Exhale. Berry plays Venus Johnson, a beautiful woman who is tired of waiting for her longtime boyfriend to propose and breaks up with him, but her resolve is tested when he promptly falls for another woman.
She will be in The Set-Up, written and directed by Sidney Lumet, with Benjamin Bratt and James Gandolfini as her co-stars. This is a remake of a 1949 boxing drama in which a 35-year-old boxer whose glory days have passed gets involved with the Mafia. He is requried to throw a big fight for a cash reward, but is unable to accept defeat — both as a boxer and as a man.
In 2005, she will do a voice in the whimsical, animated sci-fi comedy Robots, in which Ewan McGregor speaks for a young robot named Rodney who wants to work with a brilliant inventor known as Big Weld, voiced by Mel Brooks. Berry is Cappy, the hot executive robot who catches Rodney’s eye, while Stanley Tucci and Dianne Wiest provide the voices for Rodney’s parents, Mr and Mrs Copperbottom. Drew Carey and Amanda Bynes are part of the Rusties, a gang of obsolete robots.
Obviously, the theme of this particular project resonates with Berry. “In Robots, people are judged by what they are made of, and there’s an underlying message that — with all our technical upgrading and knowledge —we’re not examining what we’re leaving behind.
“I am a spiritual person,” Berry concludes. “I believe in a higher power, a creator, and I think that we are all here to give and receive love. We’re here for a specific purpose, and our life is about discovering what that purpose is.
“The only way in which we do that is to try and stay more and more connected to the creator. And that’s through the way we live our life — what we learn while we’re here, what we give back. Happiness and contentment is a journey, not a destination.” — Profiles International