Halle Maria Berry (/ˈhæli/ HAL-ee; born Maria Halle Berry; August 14, 1966) is an American actress. She began her career as a model and entered several beauty contests, becoming Miss Ohio in 1986, finishing as the first runner-up in the Miss USA pageant of 1986, and placing sixth in Miss World 1986. Her breakthrough film role was in the romantic comedy Boomerang (1992), alongside Eddie Murphy, which led to roles in The Flintstones (1994) and Bulworth (1998), as well as the television film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999), for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. Berry established herself as one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood during the 2000s. For her performance as a struggling widow in the romantic drama Monster's Ball (2001), Berry became the only African-American woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress, and the first woman of colour. Berry took on high-profile roles such as Storm in four instalments of the X-Men film series (2000–2014), the henchwoman of a robber in the thriller Swordfish (2001), Bond girl Jinx in Die Another Day (2002), a psychiatrist in Gothika (2003), and the title role in the much-derided Catwoman (2004). A varying critical and commercial reception followed in subsequent years, with Perfect Stranger (2007), Cloud Atlas (2012) and The Call (2013) being among her notable film releases in that period. Berry launched a production company, 606 Films, in 2014 and has been involved in the production of several projects in which she has performed, including the CBS science fiction series Extant (2014–2015). She appeared in the action films Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) and John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019) and made her directorial debut with the Netflix drama Bruised (2020).
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