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After participating in the Miss USA pageant, African American actress Halle Berry became a model, which led to her first weekly TV series, 1989's Living Dolls. An actress of striking beauty and elegance, she rapidly gained a reputation for on-set tenacity, preferring to "live" her roles and remaining in character even when the cameras stopped turning. This technique was not universally condoned by her fellow workers, especially when she reportedly refused to bathe for several days before starting work on her role as a crack addict in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever (1991). However, such intense preparation paid off, as Berry's work on Lee's film provided her screen breakthrough. The following year, the actress was cast as Eddie Murphy's love interest in Boomerang, one of the few times that the explosive Murphy was evenly matched on screen. Usually appearing in adult-oriented films, Berry gained a youthful following for her performance as sexy secretary Sharon Stone in The Flintstones (1994). She next had a highly publicized co-starring stint with Jessica Lange in the adoption drama Losing Isaiah (1995). Her turn as a former crack addict battling to gain custody of her child, who as an infant was adopted by an upper-class white couple, received mixed reviews. Some observers felt that her scenes with Lange merely amplified Berry's artistic shortcomings, while others believed that she had never given a more dynamic performance. Opinion of the actress' work was overwhelmingly favorable in 1998, when she starred as a street smart young woman who takes up with a struggling politician in Warren Beatty's Bulworth; the following year she won even greater acclaim for her turn as tragic screen presence Dorothy Dandridge in the made-for-cable Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. Unfortunately, any acclaim Berry enjoyed was overshadowed by her widely publicized brush with the law on February 23, 2000, when she allegedly ran a red light, slammed into another car, and then left the scene of the accident. The actress, who suffered a gash to her forehead (the driver of the other car sustained a broken wrist), was booked at a misdemeanor court in early April of that year. -- Hal Erickson |
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