Halle Berry says fourth-grade teacher's advice changed her life: 'You'll make the same mistake over and over again'

Academy Award-winning actress Halle Berry says personal responsibility is one of the most important things to her, and she remembers vividly who taught her as a child to take responsibility for her own actions, reports The Cut.

He was in the fourth grade and had just moved from an inner-city school with a majority of black students to an all-white school in the suburbs of Cleveland. “I had a teacher, Yvonne Sims. She is still a close friend and godmother to both of my children. She was one of only two black teachers in the school,” the now 59-year-old actress told The Cut in an interview.

“She made me understand from a young age that nothing just happens to you. It happens to you with your help. If you don't take responsibility for your part, you'll make the same mistake over and over again… until you do (don't take responsibility),” Halle Berry explained in the interview.

At the time, she lived with her white mother, who raised her and her older sister. Her father, who is black, left the family when she was just 4 years old. That same primary school teacher taught her to accept herself, even though until then Berry was lamenting her appearance.

“Every little girl wants to be like her mother, you know, but my mother had blonde hair and blue eyes. I would put a yellow bath towel on my head just to look like her. I struggled,” the actress said.

Halle Berry says she has always struggled with her beauty

Despite the difficulties of childhood and adolescence, her beauty did not go unnoticed. She was elected prom queen in high school, although the school authorities accused her of filling the ballot boxes with fake ballots and forced her to draw lots with a white student to decide who would be the winner. He says that's when he learned another important thing: the only way to overcome injustice is to confront it head-on.

From the beginning of her career, she aimed to be taken seriously as a dramatic actress. Berry landed her first film role at age 25 in Spike Lee's 1991 film Jungle Fever. “He wanted me to play his beautiful wife, but I was studying acting. I didn't want to be the gorgeous girl. I wanted to play the heroin addict.” Lee didn't see things that way. Undeterred, Berry says she ran to the bathroom, removed her makeup, and returned to the casting room to dispel the perception of her. She landed her breakout role as the exhausted drug addict Vivian opposite Samuel L. Jackson, and didn't shower or brush her teeth on set for ten days.

Since Berry's career took off in the 1990s, her roles have been extremely varied, with her winning an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe in 1999 for her role as 1950s actress and singer Dorothy Dandridge, and the scene in Die Another Day (2002) where she emerges from the ocean in an orange swimsuit as “Bond girl” Jinx, with a knife at her hip, cementing her sex status symbol.

The actress says that the Oscar Award did not change her career much

Perhaps her most universally appreciated performance remains the one in the feature film “Monster's Ball” released the year before and which brought her the Oscar for best actress, at the age of 35.

Winning the trophy was a career high, but “that Oscar didn't necessarily change the trajectory of my career,” she told The Cut

“After I won it, I thought a truck full of scripts was going to show up at my door. Although I was extremely proud, the next morning I was still a black woman. The directors kept saying, 'If we put a black woman in this role, what does that mean for the whole story? Do I have to cast a black man? Then it becomes a movie about black people. Movies about black people don't sell overseas,'” explained Halle Berry.

Berry once told Cynthia Erivo, another three-time Oscar nominee of color, “You deserve it, but I don't know if it's going to change your life. It can't be validation for what you're doing, can it?”

Halle Berry stars in a new movie alongside Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo

To date, she has appeared in 45 feature films, including four films in the series X-Men and in Bruised (2021), a drama she directed and starred in, about a retired MMA fighter hungry for a spectacular comeback. That movie can be seen on Netflix.

She gave the interview to The Cut website as part of the promotional tour for her new film “Crime 101: Highway Crime”, one in which she will once again star alongside top actors, as in the prime of her career.

“Set in Los Angeles, Crime 101 tells the story of a jewel thief (Chris Hemsworth) whose robberies put the police in a quandary. After setting his sights on colossal prey, his path crosses that of a disillusioned insurance agent (Halle Berry). Convinced that he has discovered a pattern, a tireless detective (Mark Ruffalo) tracks down the thief. As the strike approaches, the line between hunter and hunted begins to blur, and all three are faced with decisive choices for their lives and the realization that there is no turning back,” states the official description published for the film by Cinemagia.

The film will appear in cinemas in Romania on February 13, at the same time as the international premiere.