ByMaggie McGrath
H
alle Berry knows what you think of her. The first (and so far only) Black woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress, the former model and fixture on “most beautiful people” lists is all too familiar with being best known for her performances and her looks. But these three words, shouted on Capitol Hill in May 2024 while surrounded by a bipartisan group of senators (all women), might change that: “I’m in menopause!”
“For so long people have put me in this sex symbol box,” Berry says. “For someone like me to speak about going through menopause, which has been so stigmatized, if I can say, ‘Hey, it’s sexy to arrive at this time of our life, it’s actually a privilege to age.’ . . . I hope I’m giving [women] the courage to stand tall and accept that we don’t have to stay eternally 30. I mean, who wants to stay eternally 30?”
In her sixth decade, Berry is laser-focused on women’s health. It’s a mission of both advocacy and entrepreneurship that began when her own perimenopause was misdiagnosed as herpes and she realized just how much more awareness both doctors and patients needed about this crucial (and, for those who live long enough, universal) life stage.
