Halle Berry recently sat down with The Cut for a profile ahead of the release of her new thriller “Crime 101” and revealed that she once advised Cynthia Erivo not to place any real weight on winning an Oscar. Erivo has been nominated twice for best actress (“Harriet” and “Wicked”), while Berry made history as the first Black woman to win the Oscar for best actress with her performance in “Monster’s Ball.” She remains the only Black winner in the category to this day.
“That Oscar didn’t necessarily change the course of my career,” Berry told the publication. “After I won it, I thought there was going to be, like, a script truck showing up outside my front door. While I was wildly proud of it, I was still Black that next morning. Directors were still saying, ‘If we put a Black woman in this role, what does this mean for the whole story? Do I have to cast a Black man? Then it’s a Black movie. Black movies don’t sell overseas.’”
As Erivo’s acting career took off years later with its own Oscar nominations, Berry told her fellow performer: “You goddamn deserve it, but I don’t know that it’s going to change your life. It cannot be the validation for what you do, right?”
Berry has often spoken out in disappointment over how her historic Oscar win lacked impact for both her own career and the industry at large. She told Marie Claire in 2024 that she’s “eternally miffed that no Black woman has come behind me for that best actress Oscar. I’m continually saddened by that year after year. And it’s certainly not because there has been nobody deserving.” In fact, Michelle Yeoh for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is the only other woman of color to win the best actress Oscar.
Speaking to Variety in 2020, Berry cited Erivo in “Harriet” and Ruth Negga in “Loving” as Oscar-worthy performances by Black women. She later added Andra Day in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” and Viola Davis in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” to the list.
“I thought there were women that rightfully, arguably, could have, should have. I hoped they would have, but why it hasn’t gone that way, I don’t have the answer,” Berry told Variety at the time, noting her win remained “one of my biggest heartbreaks” as it never opened up a door for more Black women at the Oscars.
“The morning after, I thought, ‘Wow, I was chosen to open a door.’ And then, to have no one … I question, ‘Was that an important moment, or was it just an important moment for me?’” Berry said. “I wanted to believe it was so much bigger than me. It felt so much bigger than me, mainly because I knew others should have been there before me and they weren’t…just because I won an award doesn’t mean that, magically, the next day, there was a place for me. I was just continuing to forge a way out of no way.”
Head over to The Cut’s website to read Berry’s latest profile in its entirety.