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RELATED LINKS

• Ms. Berry's official site
• Ms. Berry in People magazine
• "Berry battles film race 'issue'"
• Things We Lost in the Fire

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Actress tells about her experiences with the paparazzi. (3:57)
 

Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Halle Berry back to this program. Back in 2002, she, of course, became the first African American woman ever to win the Oscar for Best Actress. See? I'm tongue-tied already. That's what happens when she shows up. And she's pregnant. I can't do nothing with it anyway (laughter). I'm getting married next weekend because I know -

Halle Berry: - are you getting married?

Tavis: I'm getting married next weekend. I just decided that since it's not going to happen to me and you. In 2000, she earned an Emmy Award for her portrayal of the legendary Dorothy Dandridge. Her latest project, of course, is "Things We Lost in the Fire". The film also stars Benicio Del Toro and David Duchovny. Here now a scene from "Things We Lost in the Fire".

[Film Clip]

Tavis: So you're more powerful than I even knew. You just speaking things into existence. So a couple of times, you were asked who you wanted to work with. He was on your short list.

Berry: Always. It was he and Denzel Washington. I always wanted to work with Benicio, so when this materialized, I was through the roof.

Tavis: Tell me about the movie.

Berry: It's an interesting movie. It's about two people who are sort of drawn together by fate and who have sort of extraordinary circumstances to deal with and how they help each other heal and find acceptance. It's about love and friendship and family. At the end of the day, it's about learning to accept the good. Even when tragedy strikes, it's about learning to find the good even in those tragic moments.

Tavis: I'm trying to phrase this the right way, Halle. Is there particular pressure or expectation that you have when you start looking at scripts post-Academy Award as opposed to pre-? I mean, I sometimes get the sense that once you have this feeling of being on the stage that night, it's probably something you want to do again if you can make it happen.

Berry: You'd love to do it again. It's validation as an actor. But at the same time, for me, I'd spent most of my career proving that I was an actress and not just a model turned actress.

So to finally get to the pinnacle of our industry's success, I felt incredibly freed now to go do some of the things that I always wanted to do, but was afraid to do because I wouldn't be taken seriously.

I would have never, say, even attempted a movie like "Catwoman" had I not had that award because I thought that would just set me, you know, ten years back if I tried to go do something like a comic book character and being a woman and being a woman of color. That could just be a nightmare for me.

But having that award gave me a newfound confidence to express myself artistically in ways that I really wanted to without having to have the validation of other people.

Tavis: So it sounds the exact opposite then. It's that the Academy, for you at least, gives you a certain kind of freedom.

Berry: For me. That's what it did for me. And I know people still sit in judgment. When you have that award, they think there's only certain types of things you should do because, my God, now you have this award.

I never wanted that pressure to sit down and stifle me either. I didn't want to lose, you know, the joy of the work and I didn't want to ever stop taking risks. That's what got me on that stage in the first place, so I wouldn't want to stop approaching the work the way I always had.

Tavis: And the script selection process is impacted how after you win one of those statutes?

Berry: Well, for me, after winning one, I won it for something really dramatic. You know, I wanted to do something drastically different. I got a bunch of scripts after that, every downtrodden Black woman in the south (laughter), but I just did that.

So I really needed to take some leaps and try new things and do other kinds of characters. Then I finally made my way back around right now to another sort of heavier, dramatic piece. But it took me a while to want to really come back and do a movie like this again.

Tavis: And what attracts you to this kind of piece now?

Berry: Now it was four or five years since I'd done it, so the desire was there to go there again. But this script came along and just moved me. It was about family and I was so wanting to be a mother that, when I read this, I knew that this script would give me a chance to sort of exercise something that I was wanting to do in my real life. You know, I could sort of work through that for myself.

I loved the characters. They were all perfectly flawed human beings. Whenever I think of doing a great dramatic role, I think of people being flawed and conflicted and complicated and having to struggle to survive and overcome, and this script provided all of that.

Tavis: This is a silly question and not the first time or the last time, certainly with you, but when I started hearing critics and reading critics saying, "Halle Berry gives a career performance", when you hear that kind of description from a critic, it almost suggests to me that she must be looking a little haggard (laughter).

It's got that "Monster's Ball" kind of feel to it. It's like, if you play that kind of role, for whatever reason, the critics then declare - which is a good thing, I guess - but they declare that this one of those roles. And if you're playing what we see now, that kind of critique I don't hear forthcoming. Does that make sense?

Berry: It does because this kind of discredits me as an actress.

Tavis: Okay.

Berry: I've discovered that the painful, hard way. I think, when you strip yourself of all of this, I think people then can get past it a little bit easier and they can go into the character and the soul of the person that you're trying to portray. So therefore, they deem it more real, more believable, more I don't know.

Tavis: It sounds weird, though. If this is what you are, then why can't you just be that?

Berry: You know what? That's been the struggle of my whole life (laughter). All of us, why can't we just be? But that's the million-dollar question.

Tavis: I know a lot of folk who would pay to have that struggle, though. It ain't the worst struggle in the world to have.

Berry: No, but nonetheless. Not only that part of it, but the other part of it too is the skin I'm in, the color that I walk around in. That's also been my struggle too. I'm not on my soapbox beating that drum, but I do think it's still important that we make people aware that it's still an issue. You know, we're not ready to abandon the thought. It's still an issue in Hollywood and we still have to struggle against it. I know I do.

Tavis: This could be my naiveté, Halle, I don't know. I get the sense - and I'm always talking about this - that given that we live in the most multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic America, never mind the ways of Hollywood, at some point it's going to have to be in vogue to be a person of color, just given the sheer numbers and the sheer nature of the kind of country that we live in.

I would like to think that, over time, that's going to change. I said the other day that people sometimes do the right thing for the wrong reasons. Sometimes they see the light, sometimes they feel the heat, but they ultimately change. My sense is, though, if this is the country that we're inhabiting, that that's going to have to change over a period of time even if they're not doing it for the right reasons.

Berry: Right. It will have to change because we are starting to all sort of become one. We really are. Which is why in the movie, it presents this family that's multiracial, multicultural and it's not brought up. Benicio Del Toro is also the best friend of David Duchovny. That isn't explained how, you know, this Puerto Rican and this white guy are now. So I do think that's the wave of the future and we all are going to start to look more like each other. I think you'll see those barriers of race -

Tavis: - is there a challenge? To the flip side of that conversation, is there a challenge, a risk, to use your earlier word, in having part of your fan base say that now that Halle has made it, she's playing alongside the Billy Bob Thorntons, the David Duchovnys, the Benicio Del Toros and that the brothers who played opposite her in these earlier roles are disappearing?

Berry: I don't know, but their battle isn't my battle. My battle is my singular battle. I know that I can't change the whole industry. I can't also be worried about, you know, if I'm ever going to work with Tommy Davidson again (laughter). I mean, I don't know if Tommy Davidson is doing movies anymore, period.

Tavis: (Laughter) That was a good movie, though.

Berry: (Laughter) A great movie.

Tavis: I loved it. "Strictly Business". Saw it the other night.

Berry: I would love to work with Tommy. I don't think he's working. I've been saying forever that I want to work with Denzel Washington, but it just doesn't seem to materialize. So I think it's important and I want to still work with, you know, Black leading men and make stories about our experience as well, but I do think it's just as important to work with other people and just be people in movies.

I do think the wave of the future is our singular story isn't going to be relevant in the future. It's going to be all about us being one people. That's how I grew up, you know, the way I was brought up with being bi-racial and I think I want to be alive and see it really start to change. I hope my child will live in a new world by the time they're my age. I hope the landscape of this country -

Tavis: - you pregnant?

Berry: No. When I get pregnant, when I have a child (laughter).

Tavis: Oh, I missed that story (laughter). You didn't say this, but you kind of alluded to it. I get the sense that you could see Benicio in the role that he's playing in this particular project. Since you want to work with Denzel - who doesn't, for that matter? You've earned that, though. You've earned that. Is there something that you think that you and Denzel could do well together? I mean, a certain type of script, a certain type of - or you haven't thought about that?

Berry: Oh, yeah. I know exactly.

Tavis: Oh, okay. All right, Denzel, here we go. Here's the pitch.

Berry: He's sick of hearing it. He's like, "Just go away."

Tavis: (Laughter) I doubt that.

Berry: You know, he and Paulette are both, "Can she get a life?" But Denzel, I think, wants to do a comedy with me, but I want to do like "The Way We Were", a great classic love story between he and I. That's what I want to do. Something that's gut-wrenching, that's passionate, that's honest and would really be reflective of two Black people coming together telling a story about our story that would be on another level. That's what I want to do with Denzel.

Tavis: To our earlier conversation, is America ready for that kind of story?

Berry: We have to make them ready. We, I think, are two people who can make them ready for that story and I would love it if we did that one day before I get too old (laughter) and he gets too old.

Tavis: You guys are both aging extremely well. I don't think that's going to be a problem. Not to move ahead of the project that's out now, "Things We Lost in the Fire", but the pendulum of looking for stuff now swings back the other way? So now you've done this thing, you now want to do something funny, something lighter?

Berry: Well, probably not. Probably the next thing I have up after this is a movie with John Singleton. I was supposed to do it before I became pregnant - I am pregnant, Tavis. So we were supposed to do a movie called "Tulia".

Tavis: This is a powerful story. It's a very powerful story.

Berry: This is a very powerful story. I won't be going back to something lighter and funny after this. I'm in the mode to do maybe a few things in the genre -

Tavis: - you want to tell a little piece about it? It's a great story.

Berry: It's a story about Tulia, Texas. In 1999, about eighty-five percent of the Black population in Tulia was railroaded into prison on false drug trafficking charges. I would play an East Indian woman named Vanita Gupta who works with the ACLU in New York. She gets together with an attorney named Jeff Blackburn who's actually in Tulia. Together, namely Vanita Gupta, she goes -

Tavis: - she's a real person. I've had her on my radio show a number of times. I've covered this story. This is amazing.

Berry: So you know. They go down there and they bust this case wide open and they get the people out of prison. It's true. In 1999, this was capable of happening.

Tavis: Went around town just arresting every Black man they could find, yeah.

Berry: Women too, yeah. It was pretty horrific. So that's the next thing up with John Singleton directing, and Billy Bob Thornton.

Tavis: Billy's back. Billy Bob is back (laughter).

Berry: Billy's back. Billy is going to play the southern attorney, which he'll be brilliant for that.

Tavis: He's a great conversationalist. Every time he comes on, I have a good time with him.

Berry: He's a good guy, very interesting.

Tavis: Yeah, I enjoy talking to him. So I' m looking at my clock on this camera. It says I got eleven minutes to go in this conversation. I wanted to see how long I could go without discussing this baby because I know you've discussed it everywhere.

Berry: And I love you for that, Tavis.

Tavis: Well, I got ten minutes to go. I could stall some more if you want to, but you tired of talking baby talk?

Berry: Publicly, yes. But in my real life, I could talk it all day long. It's the happiest, most joyful time in my life, so I'm not tired of it now. But publicly, I'm just worried that my personal life always seems to eclipse my professional life. It's just the way it works out for me. When I have a movie coming out, something is happening in my personal life that sort of upstages my career and that gets a little frustrating.

Tavis: You and I have had this conversation before off-camera any number of times. I thought the same thing. When I saw the rounds -

Berry: - it was like I was on the baby tour and I'm so not on the baby tour, but I've somehow gotten on the baby tour (laughter).

Tavis: I saw that, though, and I kind of felt that I know this is not what she wants to be talking about everywhere she goes, but what do you do?

Berry: What you've seen me do. Talk about it (laughter).

Tavis: So what I've heard is that you don't want to know the sex of the baby. That's true?

Berry: No. That's true.

Tavis: And that's why? I like that actually, but everybody knows nowadays.

Berry: We know because we can. Technology is great, but sometimes it takes, I think, that human quality out of life. There's so few genuine surprises in life, so why not just - I might only do this one time. I mean, I don't know. I barely did it this time. So I want to make that moment like as big and as grand and as exciting as I possibly can. I'm going to wait.

Tavis: All right, so that second part. I heard that you tried really, really, really hard to make that happen, true?

Berry: That's true. I mean, I was forty when I was really trying. You know, I think a big misconception today, and I want all women to know this because I was a victim of this thinking. I see women in magazines talking about they're forty-five and they're having a baby and I thought I had plenty of time. I thought, "Oh, I'm approaching forty, but I've got until forty-five." Not true. That's really not true.

Our eggs get old and, if you wait too long, you have to go through all kinds of other routes and you just don't want to have to do that. So I want women to know it's really not until you're forty-five. Many of these women who are forty-five are having babies and they're not their own eggs, but nobody talks about that either.

So it's really not true that we have into our forties. Don't look at celebrities who are doing it and think, oh, it's easy. It's really not. You should have your babies a little sooner.

Tavis: I hope this question doesn't sound naïve or silly. I'm not a woman, obviously, but I think the answer is probably different for every woman. Again, to your personal business being everywhere, everybody knows, this was very important to you. Every woman does not, again, make the same choice. Why for you is having a baby so important for Halle?

Berry: Because that's really what this life is all about. I've spent like twenty years of my life trying to have a career and trying to prove something and trying to make a difference. Then it occurred to me that that's really not what life is all about. Life is about family and about people and about unconditional love.

I knew that I really wouldn't experience that in the fullest way until I became a mother. I started to sort of ache inside when I started to think about the chance of missing it, missing the most important thing I think in life. I think one of the most important things we do as women is to have children and procreate and I just didn't want to miss that experience.

Tavis: I know you love your mother dearly. But that said, you had, in a lot of ways, a challenging childhood, a challenging upbringing, which we talked about before. I thought the other day about the challenges that this baby boy or girl is going to have, challenges different than you had. I mean, this child is not going to want for anything. The child would not be in need of anything.

Berry: There'll be no beating in our household (laughter).

Tavis: No beating in your household.

Berry: No domestic violence (laughter).

Tavis: All right, so things are going to be a little different for this baby, and thank God for Jesus on that front. A little different for this baby. But I also thought, Halle, that the other childhood that this child will have that you did not have - and I think about this in terms of fathering babies at one point - is what the child does have to deal with.

This is Halle Berry's baby, so now it's a whole different kind of challenge. Now you got to protect the baby. Now you got to hide the baby. Now you got to watch for the baby in a different way than you would if you were not Halle Berry. Are you ready for all that?

Berry: Yes and no. Yes, because I'm going to have to be. No, I don't want to be, honestly. When I look at some of the other celebrity people who have had children and I see them out and I see the paparazzi converging on these little children, I get frightened for them and for myself and for my baby.

I just start to wonder what kind of life is that going to be and how will I equalize that? Will I be able to make my children feel safe and secure? Will I need my security guard with me and will they be their sense of security? That frightens me because, as a parent, I want to be that, you know, and I don't know how I will strike the balance.

Maybe it'll be about moving out of Los Angeles and going to another city where you don't deal with all of that and you can try to find some sense of normalcy. If that's what the case ends up being, then I think that's what we'll really consider doing.

Tavis: So here's a question that puts you on the spot. At this early stage, what grade do you give the paparazzi in terms of how they're treating you with regard to the bit of privacy you're trying to hold onto right about now, pre-baby?

Berry: What's the worst, like one to ten, ten being the worst?

Tavis: Yeah, ten being the worst.

Berry: Fifteen.

Tavis: Wow. Already?

Berry: (Laughter) Yes. The day after we announced it. This is something I want to say on your show because I know you will air this and nobody else wants to tell the story.

Tavis: All right, Neal, don't edit this out.

Berry: No, don't. Two days after I announced it, I got into a car accident because the paparazzi chased me until I smashed my car. Eight thousand dollars worth of damage to my car, but nobody wants to run this story. Nobody wants to tell this story.

Then a week after that, the paparazzi put a picture of my car being towed from my house, the side that wasn't crashed, and they said, "Halle Berry's car is being towed because she was illegally parked." No, it was crashed because the paparazzi chased me into a wall when I was three months pregnant.

That's the stories you don't hear about and that's the frightening part of it for me. It hit me two days into it that, oh, my God, this is going to be a really crazy, crazy time.

Tavis: That conjures up the obvious, which is Princess Diana, and the number of other stories, but hers, of course, the story about being chased by paparazzi to one's death.

Berry: But it's like we've forgotten about that. We've forgotten about that.

Tavis: Take me back to that moment, then, and tell me how you processed that moment in your car running from the paparazzi.

Berry: I sat there and immediately thought, "Oh, my God, I hope this jolt and this bang hasn't done anything to me internally." That's immediately what I thought. When I got out of my car, of course, they scattered and everybody left. These people don't have license plates on their cars, so you couldn't get a license plate if you want. There's nothing there for you to get and write down and even report.

So there I was stuck with my crashed-up car wondering if this somehow impacted my pregnancy and feeling totally helpless and violated and I had no recourse against anyone.

Tavis: How do you strike an emotional balance then, Halle, where the paparazzi are concerned? Because on the one hand, these people are chasing you and making you run into walls. They've caused the death of some famous people around the globe for that kind of activity, wretched though it might be.

On the other hand, these are the folk that help make you money, the folk that help pay the bills, the folk that promote your movies; they put you in these magazines.

Berry: But is that promoting my movie or my lifestyle?

Tavis: Right, but one would argue that the two things are inseparable these days.

Berry: Not anymore and that's a shame they have become. Proof? I can give you a list of people who are in the paparazzi right now, in those pages every day. Their movies don't open; their records don't sell. So it's not really about -

Tavis: - Britney Spears isn't selling records right now?

Berry: I don't think so.

Tavis: Just being funny (laughter). She ought to have something to sell right about now, as much press as she's getting. But I digress. Go ahead.

Berry: So I don't think it's one and the same anymore. It used to be maybe twenty years ago, maybe ten years ago, but now all that paparazzi fury is all about invading your personal space because people now have an insatiable appetite for what people really do.

I don't know why people want to see you picking out your apples at the grocery store or why they want to see you pumping gas or going through McDonalds drive-thru. I don't know. There are certain people that court it, but I'm certainly not one of these people that court it. I'm always wondering why you're here.

I'm the most boring person on the planet. I'm just going to pick up my dogs from the groomer. I'm just going to my girlfriend's house to have lunch. I'm not kicking up dust on any day, so why are they here? Outside your studio today. Why? What am I doing that's so -

Tavis: - were they outside today?

Berry: Yeah, like a band of them. But what am I doing?

Tavis: Talking to me. They came to see me. It wasn't you. They came to see me. It wasn't about you (laughter).

Berry: But they can't be in here, so what are they getting, you know? It doesn't make sense to me.

Tavis: Well, it shows, though - this is a strange turn here. It shows that there is a value on Halle Berry. If you can just get a picture of her, people want to see you so much.

Berry: But what's that value? But why?

Tavis: Somebody's paying for it.

Berry: But why? Let's ask the American public why.

Tavis: Now that's the question I want to get to.

Berry: I want them to go see my movie that we worked so hard on that's a story that has a subject matter, that's about something, that will really leave them thinking about something. Not the apples that I'm picking out at Bristol Farms. That's nothing to talk about or even think about. Let's have them be invested in other things that are more important and valuable in our society.

Tavis: All right, so camera three is your camera. We're going to close the show by letting you look directly into camera three and tell America about your movie and why they should go see it (laughter).

Berry: My movie is called "Things We Lost in the Fire" starring Benicio Del Toro and David Duchovny. I really think you should go see it because it's a movie about something. It has heart. It's about family, relationships, friendship. It's about loss. It's about helping each other learn how to deal with sort of the valleys of life and realizing that, going through those valleys, you still can come out on the top and learn how to accept the good.

Tavis: Very nicely done. If this mothering thing doesn't work out for you, you should try acting or something (laughter).

Berry: Or your job, because you've been doing it five years. I think you need to step aside and let somebody else do it.

Tavis: You know what? That part will be edited out. Because if PBS hears that Halle Berry wants my job, I'm sure I'm getting a pink slip not tomorrow, but tonight. It's probably being faxed as we speak (laughter). Anyway, congratulations on the new project, "Things We Lost in the Fire", and on the baby. I am so happy for you. If anybody deserves to be happy, it is you and I'm glad it's working out for you. Good to see you.

Berry: Thank you, Tavis. Thank you so much.

Tavis: That's our show for tonight.