Heartbreaking Details Behind Halle Berry’s Painful Experiences Come To Light & Are Pitiful

Sep 22, 2023 by apost team

Halle Berry is an accomplished actress with over three decades of experience in Hollywood. The former model and beauty pageant queen was the first Black woman to represent the US in the Miss World pageant and the first and only Black woman to win an Oscar for Best Actress for her performance in “Monster Ball.” 

However, as much as Berry’s life glitters, it has also been filled with pain through various journeys.  

Berry is biracial and was often targeted for racist attacks. When Berry was young, her mom, Judith Ann Hawkins, took her and her older sister out of school in inner Cleveland because of the violence in the schools and relocated them to the suburbs, where they went to school with predominantly white kids. Thus, they encountered a new problem. 

“Because my mother was white and my father was black… we got called Oreos and names, and kids just didn’t understand, so we were different,” Berry told People.

Berry also witnessed her stepfather beating her mother. She was only five at the time. The actress volunteered for the Jenesse Center, the oldest domestic violence intervention program in Los Angeles, because of her experience. 

“I’m a victim of domestic violence. I wasn’t married to a man that beat me up, but my mother was,” she said at a community event in 2015.

The Oscar Winner’s mom was beaten daily and even kicked down the stairs. She also got a bottle broken on the back of her head. Berry didn’t get out of the situation fast enough as she and her sister got traumatized by the experience. 

Berry tried to compensate for the rejection she experienced by giving her all into everything she did. This is obvious in the way she immerses herself in her roles.

However, Berry’s journey to acting was hard, and she only continued because giving up wasn’t an option. 

Berry gave acting a try after a mentor suggested it and moved to New York with money she had saved from modeling, but that ran out three months later. She had to live in a homeless shelter for a year until she got back on her feet because her mother refused to send her some money.

“I called my mother, and I asked her to send me some money, and she said no, and that subsequently led to a year of not speaking to her because I was so upset that she wouldn’t help me,” the actress told People in 2017.

However, Berry acknowledged that her mom’s refusal helped her to become independent. The two are good friends now. 

The award-winning actress found it difficult to get roles in Hollywood because of her skin color, but that didn’t deter her. She put great effort into the ones she got, and her talent soon captured the attention of many. The budding actress was compared to Jack Lemmon and William Holden in their early days in the industry in a July 7, 1992 publication. 

In 2002, her name made the list of Barbara Walters’ 2002 most fascinating people when she won her Oscar award. 

Berry is, however, heartbroken that she is still the only Black woman to win the award in that category. Winning an Oscar also didn’t get her the many roles she assumed she would get. Berry continued to fight for roles, including in “Bruised,” where she made her directorial debut. The movie’s title summed up her situation as she got wounded many times on set while filming.

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Berry was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes while filming “Living Dolls.” “Diabetes caught me completely off guard,” Berry told Daily Mail in 2005. She was in a diabetic coma for a week and attributed her bones breaking easily on set to her diabetes. 

She broke some ribs while filming “John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum” and told Variety that she initially thought it was due to osteoporosis or cancer. Berry also needed a 30-minute operation in 2002 after debris from a smoke grenade flew into one eye while filming “Die Another Day.” Her doctor remarked:

“She has been quite lucky, in fact.”

Meanwhile, Berry is no stranger to failed relationships; she has been divorced three times and lost 80 percent of hearing in her left ear to an abusive ex, who many thought was her first husband, David Justice. He only revealed that it wasn’t him in 2015 during her third divorce. 

“Not only did David Justice not do that, David Justice never hit her, period,” the retired pro baseball player told People. 

On her part, Berry revealed that she attempted suicide after their divorce. “I was going to sit in the car, asphyxiate myself,” she said but didn’t follow through because of her mom’s sacrifices. 

Berry married Eric Benét in 2001 but filed for divorce in 2003 following multiple allegations of infidelity. However, Benét confessed that while he cheated, there was no sexual intercourse involved. 

Berry moved on to boyfriend Gabriel Aubry in 2005, and they welcomed daughter, Nahla, in 2008. They split in 2010, and an ugly custody battle followed. Aubry also had a fistfight with Berry’s third husband, Olivier Martinez, in Los Angeles. 

Berry wed Martinez in 2013 and welcomed son, Maceo, with him in October. She filed for divorce in 2015 and pays $8,000 monthly to both Aubry and Martinez for child support. 

The actress has now been with Van Hunt since 2020 and says she’s found happiness and peace with him. 

What do you think of Halle Berry’s story? Does her resilience inspire you? Let us know — and pass this on to Halle Berry fans, who would be inspired by her grit.