HALLE BERRY BIOGRAPHY
 

Now, with the Justice affair behind her, things began to change. First came miniseries The Wedding , another racially motivated movie, this time asking whether Berry should marry a white jazz musician or do the proper thing and wed a black man. Then came the comeback, and in the strangest possible way. In Bulworth, Warren Beatty played a suicidal senator who organises a hit on himself and decides to spend his last hours telling the truth to the people. Down in South Central, he meets street-smart Berry who thinks his honesty is another political con-job, but gradually comes to fall for his bizarre integrity, as does the rest of the nation. It's an appalling film on so many levels. That Berry should fall for the wrinkled Beatty was absurd, but that wasn't a patch on Beatty's skin-crawlingly embarrassing attempts at rapping. Yet somehow Berry shone - and all the more so because she was surrounded by such awestriking ineptitude.

Now back in the minds of Hollywood's powerbrokers, she cemented her position with two smaller but infinitely more worthy projects. First came Why Do Fools Fall In Love where she played one of three women claiming to be the widow of singer Frankie Lymon and battling for his estate. Then, in 1999, there was Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, executively produced by Berry herself. Dandridge was the first black actress to be nominated for the Best Actress Oscar - for Carmen Jones. The film followed her from her early days on the club circuit, through her screen career, her affair with Otto Preminger, her troubles with racists (in one hotel they emptied the pool and scrubbed it after she put her foot in it), and on to her sad death from an overdose. Co-incidentally, Dandridge was born in the same Cleveland hospital as Halle Berry.

Halle was terrific in the role, winning both an Emmy and a Golden Globe. She was back - her disappointment at turning down the Sandra Bullock role in Speed now a distant memory. And, at last, she had a stable relationship, in 1999 having got engaged to Eric Benet. Benet was a successful musician, signed to WEA - his A Day In The Life album would go Gold. He had been married too, but his wife had died in a car crash, leaving him to care for daughter India (born in 1992). He needed Berry as much as she needed him (maybe more after he appeared in Mariah Carey's disastrous Glitter), and they were married in January 2001.

Now came the big movies. First she made a tremendous Storm, a mutant super-heroine capable of controlling the weather, in the massive hit X-Men. Then came Swordfish, with John Travolta and her X-Men co-star Hugh Jackman. This concerned computer hackers going after billions of dollars in unused government funds and was very stylish, though audience polls suggested that everyone's favourite moment was when Halle went topless. She shrugged that off, admitting she took the role in order to finance other more interesting work. But she vociferously denied receiving an extra $500,000 for removing her clothes, as she would deny the $1 million fee it was claimed she accepted for the sex scene in Monster's Ball.

But it wasn't all plain sailing. In February 2000, Halle ran a red light in her rented Chevrolet Blazer and, on Sunset Boulevard, hit the vehicle of one Hetha Raythatha whose wrist was broken in the collision. Halle took off for hospital where she received 20 stitches in her head, only reporting the accident later. Despite claiming she was disorientated by the injury to her head, she was charged with leaving the scene of an accident and got three years probation, a $13,500 fine and 200 hours community service. PLUS she'll have to pay whatever compensation is demanded after the inevitable civil action. .