Credit to Twitter Halle Berry
By Anadolu Agency
When Halle Berry won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2002, it was a milestone in movie history. She became the first woman of color to win the Oscar for her role as widowed waitress, Leticia Musgrove, in the 2001 film, Monster’s Ball.
“This moment is so much bigger than me,” she said in her acceptance speech. “It’s for every nameless, faceless woman of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened.”
But that door remains closed. Two decades after her breakthrough victory, Berry remains the only black female to win the award.
“I do feel completely heartbroken that there’s no other woman standing next to me in 20 years,” Berry said in an interview for an ABC and Hulu TV special, Screen Queens Rising.
“I thought, like everybody else, that night meant a lot of things would change … that there would be other women. I thought 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. No other woman is standing there.”
Disappointment brings perspective to the 55-year-old actress, who leans on the philosophy that awards are no longer how she measures success.
“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,” she said. “And I see the movement forward. And I think that night inspired so many of those people to dream those dreams.”
Only eight Black women have won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in its 93-year-history, including Hattie McDaniel in Gone With The Wind, Whoopi Goldberg for her role in Ghost, Jennifer Hudson for Dream Girls, Mo’Nique in Precious, Octavia Spencer for The Help, Lupita Nyong’o in 12 Years A Slave, Viola Davis in Fences and Regina King for her role in If Beale Street Could Talk.
As much as Berry is rooting for the next breakthrough moment for Black women at the Oscars, she passed along a bit of wisdom.
“Awards are nice and it’s great,” she said, “But the value that you place on it is where your peace will reside.”
Oscar nominations will be announced Feb. 8.
The 94th Academy Awards is scheduled to take place in Hollywood on March 27.