Halle Berry: Bold & Beautiful

All of her life, she has been praised for her beauty. This African American actress has been showings her skills even since she was elected prom queen in high school. She was born in Cleveland, Ohio on August 14th, 1968. She is the youngest daughter born to Jerome and Judith Berry, an interracial couple. She also possesses a nickname as Hannah Little. She got this name from the town's Halle Building, which originally housed the Halle Brothers department store. Her mother, Judith, was and is still working as a nurse in a psychiatric ward, but her father was not present for the majority of Halle’s life. She has an elder sister named Heidi.

Her father broke the relations with family when she was only four years old and returned when she was eight. Her father was rude and used to beat them. Due to her father’s inhuman and insulting behavior, she has no contact with her father to this day.
Halle, and Heidi, spent the first few years of their childhood staying in an inner city neighborhood. Halle was then taken by her mother to the predominantly white Cleveland suburb of Bedford. Halle switched from one white public school to another but everywhere she was subjected to discrimination at an early age. In school she participated in a variety of extracurricular activities, holding positions of newspaper editor, class president, member of the honor society, varsity cheerleader, and prom queen.

Halle first came into the limelight at the age of 17 when she won the Miss Teen All-American Pageant, representing the state of Ohio in 1985 and a year later in 1986 when she was the first runner-up in the Miss USA Pageant. She then finished her study of broadcast journalism in the Cuyohoga Community College. After contesting in the pageant, she became a model. As a result she got a role to play in a weekly TV series, 1989's "Living Dolls" (1989), where she soon gained a reputation for her on set tenacity, preferring to "live" her roles and remaining in character even when the cameras stopped rolling. Her first break on big screen came later that year when she was cast as Samuel L, Jackson’s drug suffered girlfriend in Spike Lee’s "Jungle Fever". The very next year, she was cast as Eddie Murphy's love interest in Boomerang (1992). In 1994, she gained a youthful following for her performance as sexy secretary Sharon Stone in Flintstones, The (1994). She then acted with Jessica Lange in the adoption drama Losing Isaiah (1995).

She then married David Justice, a baseball player for the Atlanta Braves on January 1st, 1993 and divorced in March of 1996. She then felt in love with Eric Benet, a jazz musician, in August of 1999. They got engaged in December of that year.

In the year 1995 the American magazine "Ebony" chose her as the most beautiful, Afro-American woman. She has also been a spokeswoman for Revlon cosmetics since 1996. In 1998, she got vital success when she starred as a street smart young woman who takes up with a struggling politician in Warren Beatty's Bulworth (1998). The following year she won even greater acclaim for her role as actress Dorothy Dandridge in made-for-cable's Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999) (TV), for which she won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV Movie/Mini-Series. In 2000, she fetched a box office success in X-Men (2000) in which she acted Storm, a mutant who has the ability to control the weather.

She probably brought a lot of traffic to halt in 2001 when she bared her breasts for the first time in the John Travolta flick Swordfish. She continued her new bold image and again bared her body and soul in the drama Monster's Ball. She got Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for the role she played. Halle became the first African-American actress to succeed for Best Actress at the Oscars a moment she cherished in a long and tearful speech.

After her Monster's Ball movie she did some light work. She got a new frame as a Bond girl, from 2002's Die Another Day and reprised her role as Storm in 2003's X2: X-Men United. In the same year she appeared in Gothika. She also depicted her action fold in 2004's Catwoman.

Halle could not get the love of her parents together, but she has overcame over all things and now enjoying her career as an actress. She has a large number of fan followers and continues to entertain them.