Halle Berry Answers The Web's Most Searched Questions

Hi, I am Halle Berry

and this is the Wired Autocomplete Interview.

[upbeat music]

Yes, I have Googled myself.

What was Halle Berry's first movie role?

Jungle Fever.

I was very method back then in Jungle Fever days.

I had to go to a real crack den.

I didn't shower, I didn't wash my hair, all that.

I've evolved since then, let's just say.

What are Halle Berry's dog's names in John Wick?

Oh God, what were my dog's names?

I feel like a terrible dog mom.

The only names that come to my mind right now

are my own dogs, Jackson and Roman,

and my two kitties, Cocoa and Boots.

I don't remember.

I forgot. Sorry.

What did Halle Berry win an Oscar for?

Oh, well that was Monster's Ball, Leticia Musgrove.

I mean, anytime you win an Academy Award,

you automatically get put in this illustrious club

that not many are part of.

So that was career changing, life changing,

probably the highlight, definitely one

of the highlights of my career.

What is Halle Berry's latest movie?

[laughing]

My last two movies where The Union and Never Let Go.

That hasn't come out yet.

Those are my last two movies.

Was Halle Berry Miss America?

No, I was not Miss America.

I was Miss Teen All American.

I was Miss Ohio in the Miss USA pageant,

and I was Miss USA in the Miss World pageant.

I sort of got into my very first pageant

by my boyfriend at the time, and I wore my prom dress

because he wanted to date a beauty pageant queen.

So kinda wrangled me in there.

And once you win one of those things, you kind of have to go

to the next, and the next, and the next, and the next.

So I ended up doing a pageant cycle

that I didn't actually ask to get put on.

But I loved it.

It was a great proving ground for me.

It taught me how to talk in front of people,

how to be comfortable in my own skin, think on my feet,

able to do interviews.

Like it was a wonderful thing to have done,

so don't regret it.

How did Halle Berry become an actress?

Quite by accident, actually.

I didn't really set out to be an actor.

I wanted to be a journalist.

I wanted to travel and go to war zones

and sort of report on

what was really happening in the world.

And I moved to Chicago and found that I was bored

and I decided to take a class at Second City,

and it was my teacher there that said,

I think you have some raw natural talent.

Have you thought about being an actor?

And that was the first time I thought about it

when I was about 20 years old, 21 years old.

What James Bond movie was Halle Berry, oh, in?

That would be Die Another Day with Pierce Brosnan.

He will always be my Bond, always.

I'm a Pierce Brosnan fan.

He restored my faith in men on that movie.

There couldn't be a human who is more

of a gentleman than Pierce Brosnan.

Bond wasn't on my wishlist, no, to be in one,

but I loved the movies always.

But having been in one, I feel like I'm a part

of cinematic history.

Those movies are iconic.

They will forever be a part of our history,

and I'm really honored to have been a part of one,

especially with Pierce.

How long did Halle Berry train for John Wick III?

Oh my God, a long time.

Probably eight or nine months before doing that movie.

I trained with, you know, my fight team.

I had to learn Jujitsu and movie fighting,

some Taekwondo, some Muay Thai.

I also had to train with the dogs.

I did a lot of training for John Wick III.

Halle Berry as Storm.

Yeah, that happened.

I really loved playing Storm.

You know, being in the world of the X-Men

and the mutants was always really important to me

because being a woman of color,

I have often felt on the outside of things.

I've often felt marginalized

and overlooked and unseen.

And that's what the X-Men were all about.

These mutants finding their voice

and finding a way to be seen

and appreciated for who they really were.

And as a black woman, I really related to that.

So it was fun to put on the skin of Storm and to fly

and to be a part of that kind of storytelling.

I thought it was really important.

Halle Berry, vegan.

Oh hell no, that's not true.

[laughing]

Nothing against vegans.

I love people that are vegans.

Great you're vegan, but I could never be a vegan.

Halle Berry, pixie cut. Yes.

You know, I got that pixie cut

because as a young actor, I used to go on auditions

and I would sit in the room

and there'd be 20 other girls that looked just like me.

Long girly hair.

You couldn't tell us apart.

The casting director would kind of go, ah, you.

And I realized that I had

to somehow distinguish myself from the others.

So all of a sudden, one day I decided to cut all

of my hair off and that's where that pixie cut came from.

And the first audition,

after cutting that hair,

I got my first acting job

on a show called Living Dolls with that pixie cut.

So the pixie worked for me.

Halle Berry, Time 100.

Oh yes.

I just received this wonderful honor from Time,

Time 100 in Health this year

because I've been fiercely advocating in Washington.

And I'm starting an online health company

called Re Spin Health

to really help women starting at perimenopause

and through midlife.

It's a female longevity brand,

and I'm super excited about that.

There's been so little research, so little clinical trials.

You know, doctors only spend one chapter in medical school

learning about the menopausal body.

So it's time.

It's time for women, it's time for us

to get the healthcare that we need.

Where did Halle Berry, oh, these ones always scare me.

Where did Halle Berry grow up?

Well, I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio,

a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio called Oakwood Village.

And I was a cheerleader, and I played the flute,

and I was president of my class,

and editor of the school paper.

That's what I did when I was growing up.

Did Halle Berry sing in Dorothy Dandridge?

Well, no, but I pretended to sing.

Wendy Williams actually did my movie singing.

I wanted to sing,

but I realized I could not, so they were like,

we could use auto tune, we could use all these things.

And I thought, no, no, no.

Dorothy deserves better than that.

So we got Wendy Williams, who really is a beautiful singer,

and she came and did the Dorothy singing for me.

Halle Berry, Kevin Hart movie.

I guess you could say it was a movie.

It was Kevin's stand-up movie.

And he asked me to be a part of the opening,

which was really fun.

It was the first time I really got to meet Kevin too.

And it was a fun little bit that we did.

It was fun.

Halle Berry in the Flintstones.

Oh yes. Rosetta Stone.

I was in the Flintstones.

My character was modeled after Sharon Stone.

I was supposed to be this vampy, sexy, slinky character

that was sort of channeling Sharon Stone.

That was really important for me

because as a black woman,

being in Bedrock was pretty revolutionary at the time.

I grew up watching The Flintstones.

And there were no black people in Bedrock

until I got to play Rosetta Stone in The Flintstones.

So that was groundbreaking for me personally.

I think people also wanted to see, you know,

a black person in Bedrock.

Halle Berry, Never Let Go.

Ooh, that's a movie that I have coming out this fall.

I'm really proud of this one.

It's the first movie that my partner Holly Jeter

and I have produced with our new company, Halle Holly.

It's something you've never seen before.

It is seeing a mother

and her two children in an environment

that is very spooky.

It's a psychological thriller, kind of horror movie.

And I didn't think it was gonna be

as scary as it actually is.

I just saw it the other day for the first time

and it's legit scary, probably because it's so real.

Halle Berry, Baps.

Oh, Baps.

That makes me think of Robert Townsend,

the late great Natalie Desselle.

She's passed away now, but she was my partner in crime.

We had so much fun.

Ruth Carter did those amazing costumes

that people dress up year

after year at Halloween as those characters.

And it was an entree into comedy for me.

And I couldn't think of a better person to do that

with than Robert Townsend.

It was over the top, slapstick,

but it was a movie that had heart.

To this day, people tell me how much they liked that movie.

And Halle Berry, Extant.

This is what people are, they're looking this stuff up?

Really, Extant.

Extant was a while ago.

That was a television show I did.

It was a show about a woman going to space

and it was a lot of technical research

that I had to do in that movie.

And the hours, the hours were really long.

I had just had a baby, so I was nursing.

I would shoot and then I would go into my nursery

and nurse, I would shoot, come back.

It was my first time having to be a mom

and deal with what it was to be a mom,

but also be a mom at work on a filming set,

like 16 hours a day.

It was probably the time I worked the hardest for sure.

Last one, Halle Berry, Oscar dress.

That's a fond memory that was a dress by Elie Saab.

And he wasn't really a known designer at that time,

but I'm someone that doesn't always go

for the hottest designer at the time.

I go for the dress

and what reflects how I wanna feel in that moment.

And that was risky for me.

But the film Monster's Ball that I won the Oscar for

felt risky to me at the time that I made that movie.

So it was just sort of an homage

to the risky feeling I had about the movie,

so I decided to wear a risky dress.

It's one of, probably, my most favorite dresses of all time.

I don't know, I'm surprised that anybody, you know,

Googles me at all actually.

So it was interesting.

That's all the questions today.

Thanks Wired. Until next time.

[soft music]