‘I was still black the next morning’: Halle Berry says Oscar win didn’t change her career

The actor says her historic 2002 best actress Oscar did not open doors in Hollywood, as studios remained wary of stories led by black performers

Halle Berry, the only black woman to have won the best actress Oscar, says her 2002 victory “didn’t necessarily change the course of my career”.

Speaking to The Cut’s Monica Corcoran Harel to promote new drama Crime 101, Berry said that she anticipated the victory, for Lee Daniels’ Monster’s Ball, would mean “there was going to be a script truck showing up outside my front door”.

Yet the number of projects she was offered remained stable because of the industry’s continued uncertainty about how to tell the stories of people of colour, said Berry.

“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.’”