Halle Berry says directors still refused to cast her after Oscar win and reveals advice she gave to Cynthia Erivo
- - Halle Berry says directors still refused to cast her after Oscar win and reveals advice she gave to Cynthia Erivo
Lauren HuffFebruary 17, 2026 at 12:00 AM
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Best Actress winner Halle Berry, backstage at the 74th Annual Academy Awards in 2002
Getty
Add Halle Berry to the list of stars who don't feel like winning an Oscar changed their career necessarily for the better.
The Crime 101 star recently opened up to The Cut about her historic win for Best Actress for her performance in Monster's Ball. The win was the first, and remains the only, one for a Black woman in the category.
"That Oscar didn’t necessarily change the course of my career," Berry told the outlet. “After I won it, I thought there was going to be, like, a script truck showing up outside my front door. While I was wildly proud of it, I was still Black that next morning. 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.’”
In the same interview, Berry also revealed that she once advised fellow star Cynthia Erivo — who has twice been nominated in the category for her roles in Harriet and Wicked — not to place any real weight on winning an Oscar.
Cynthia Erivo at the 97th Oscars in 2025
Gilbert Flores/Penske Media via Getty
"You goddamn deserve it, but I don’t know that it’s going to change your life," she said she told Erivo. "It cannot be the validation for what you do, right?"
Berry previously told Marie Claire in 2024 how disappointed she was that her historic moment didn't have more of a snowball effect for the industry, saying she's "eternally miffed that no Black woman has come behind me for that Best Actress Oscar. I’m continually saddened by that year after year. And it’s certainly not because there has been nobody deserving.”
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The Catwoman star is one of several actresses to open up about how winning an Academy Award didn't necessarily have the intended career effect. Melissa Leo, who won Best Supporting Actress for The Fighter back in 2011, shared her brutally honest thoughts about her win, including that she believes it has, in fact, had a negative impact on her career.
"Winning an Oscar has not been good for me or my career," she said recently in a reader Q&A with The Guardian, adding, "I didn’t dream of it, I never wanted it, and I had a much better career before I won."
And Marcia Gay Harden, who won Best Supporting Actress for the 2000 movie Pollock, famously told the Los Angeles Times in 2003 that the award was "disastrous on a professional level" for her.
“Suddenly the parts you’re offered and the money become smaller. There’s no logic to it,” she added.
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
