Halle Berry Says She's 'Longed’ For Someone To Compliment Her With Something Other Than ‘You're So Pretty'
After practically a lifetime of being held to draconian beauty standards, Berry is choosing a different path.
DFree | Canva Pro There's no doubt about it: Beauty opens doors. That's never more true than it is in Hollywood. As one of the great legendary beauties, actor Halle Berry knows this probably better than anyone.
However, the currency of beauty comes with a dark side, too. Berry recently opened up about how being at the center of a system that values beauty above all else has impacted her — and how it is remapping her future as she heads into a new era of life.
Halle Berry says she has 'longed' to be valued for more than her looks.
Berry's career literally began with her looks — she started out as a model and beauty queen, rising to first runner-up in the 1986 Miss USA pageant and the top 10 of the Miss World pageant that same year.
Fame soon followed after breakout roles in Spike Lee's 1991 film "Jungle Fever" and 1992's "Boomerang." Less than 10 years later, she was making Hollywood history, becoming the first and only Black woman to win the Best Actress Oscar for 2001's gritty drama "Monster's Ball."
But as so often happens with Hollywood's great Oscar-winning beauties, Berry's historic win was often derided as being mostly a result of her "de-glamming" her appearance to play the unraveling Georgia widow and mom at the center of the story.
No surprise then that Berry, now 58, recently told Fortune that she has often felt slighted because of her appearance.
"I have longed for someone to say something to me other than, 'Oh gosh, you're so pretty,'" Berry bluntly said. "I've longed to hear other words. I know I'm more than this."
It's a perfect summation of the double bind women are put in — if you're not conventionally beautiful enough, you're not taken seriously; if you're too beautiful, you're not taken seriously either.
This longing has led Berry to make a fierce commitment to aging 'gracefully and naturally.'
So often, these strictures about appearance manifest in people doing all they can to maintain their appearance and fight the advances of aging, whether they're a star or just a regular old person like you or me.
For Berry, it's had the opposite effect — it has inspired a firm commitment to lean into the perspective that aging is a privilege.
"I've been determined to age gracefully and naturally," Berry said. "I think it's a shame that, as women, we're being told that we have to find a way to stay eternally young, forever 30. As though we're not allowed to be human and do what we're naturally born to do."
Berry means that last part in the most literal sense. "We're born to age and die," she bluntly said. She's right of course, and our collective anxiety about it doesn't resonate for Berry, who seems determined to not be swayed by the cultural and Hollywood imperatives to fight back.
"Somehow, as women, we have to do the unthinkable," she said of the pressures to fight aging by any means necessary, whether at the gym or in the operating room. Berry refuses to give in because, for her, it comes down to one essential truth: "You're more than this shell you're walking around in."
Berry is part of a growing number of Hollywood icons who have decided to embrace aging.
Berry is certainly not alone in her refusal to fall in line with what Hollywood and society at large expect of women of a certain age. Actor Jamie Lee Curtis is probably the best-known celebrity who has been emphatic about accepting aging — and she began speaking out about it long before it was fashionable.
In recent years, the ranks have grown and have come to include other figures like Berry, whose stardom came at least partly on the heels of their looks. Angelina Jolie, now 49, recently said that she's not afraid to be staring down 50, telling People that she actually feels like an older woman at this point in her life and has decided to "embrace that."
Pamela Anderson, who rose to superstardom in the '90s as an unparalleled blond bombshell, has also made waves in recent years by not only not fighting aging, but refusing to even so much as wear makeup, including while walking the runway for fashion labels The Row and Isabel Marant. Why? For the simplest reason possible: "Anti-aging is a lie."
This touches on something else Berry said. "We're turning ourselves into monsters trying to [stay young]," she told Fortune, a timely sentiment in a moment when a horror movie about just that, "The Substance," is expected to be in Oscar contention.
Here's hoping this philosophy continues catching, because it's long past time for all of us, and women especially, to be able to enjoy and feel good about ourselves throughout our lives — not just during the years when we conform to standards we had no say in creating.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.