Halle Berry expected more from her historic Oscar win.
In a new interview with The Cut, Berry, 59, revealed that she was let down by the aftermath of becoming the first black woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress.
“That Oscar didn’t necessarily change the course of my career,” said Berry, who took home the trophy in 2002 for playing a grieving mother and widow in “Monster’s Ball.”
“After I won it, I thought there was going to be, like, a script truck showing up outside my front door,” Berry continued. “While I was wildly proud of it, I was still Black that next morning.”
The “X-Men” actress even claimed that her race worked against her after winning the Oscar.
“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,’” she recalled.
Berry also recalled telling three-time Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo, “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?”
Erivo, 39, was nominated for Best Original Song and Best Actress, both for “Harriett,” in 2020. She scored her third nom last year for her lead role in the first “Wicked” movie, but was snubbed for her performance in the sequel.
Berry was hailed for her performance in Marc Foster’s “Monster’s Ball,” also starring Billy Bob Thornton, Sean “Diddy” Combs and the late Heath Ledger.
She beat out Judi Dench (“Iris”), Nicole Kidman (“Moulin Rouge!”), Sissy Spacek (“In the Bedroom”) and Renee Zellweger (“Bridget Jones’s Diary”) in the Best Actress category.
In her moving speech at the time, Berry said, “This moment is so much bigger than me. This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll. It’s for the women that stand beside me, Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett, Vivica Fox. And it’s for every nameless, faceless woman of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened.”
Berry has not been nominated at the Oscars since then.
In 2005, she won the Worst Actress Razzie Award for her critically maligned performance in 2004’s “Catwoman.”
“I’ve always known that Oscar didn’t make me the best, just like that Razzie doesn’t make me the worst,” Berry told The Cut.
In 2022, Berry told the New York Times that still being the only black Best Actress winner is “heartbreaking.”
“It didn’t open the door,” she added, explaining that Hollywood awards, while considered “icing on the cake,” ultimately don’t matter.
