Halle Berry is rightly tired of being the only Black Best Actress Oscar winner
Halle Berry became a pioneer when she won the Best Actress Academy Award for her performance in Monster’s Ball in 2002. She delivered an iconic speech as she stood on stage and held the trophy. This win felt like barrier had been broken down for Black Best Actress winners of future Oscars.
“This moment is so much bigger than me,” Berry said during her speech. “This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll. It’s for the women that stand beside me, Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett, Vivica Fox. And it’s for every nameless, faceless woman of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened.” But years passed… and then decades… and Berry remained the only one. Needless to say, she’s not happy about it.
“Being born a Black woman, I feel like I have always felt like I sat at the bottom of society,” she said while appearing on Trevor Noah’s podcast What Now? “White man, Black man, white woman, Black woman. So I’ve always felt at the bottom, never feeling like I was defeated because I was at the bottom, never feeling like I couldn’t dream big because I was at the bottom, never feeling like I wasn’t worthy or capable because I was at the bottom. But I always have known that I’m going to have to work 10 times harder than everybody else to get anywhere.”
More Black actresses deserve to win Academy Awards
That’s a feeling that is surely echoed by many of Berry’s contemporaries. Take Angela Bassett for example, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in 2023 but lost to Jamie Lee Curtis. Her look of disappointment at being snubbed became a meme, but Black women related to her frustration. Later on, Bassett said it was “interesting that I wouldn’t be allowed to be disappointed at an outcome where I thought I was deserving.”
Berry told Noah about her Best Actress triumph, “I hope this year someone stands next to me. I hope it happens because I’m tired of occupying that space alone.”
She’s right to be tired. Just look at the statistics. Since Berry’s win, only six Black women have ever been nominated for Best Actress. These are Gabourey Sidibe, Viola Davis (who was nominated twice), Quvenzhané Wallis (she was 9-years-old), Ruth Negga, Cynthia Erivo (also nominated twice) and Andra Day. All nominees were deserving, but none of them won. In some years, Black people didn’t even make it to the nomination stage of the acting Oscars, sparking the #OscarsSoWhite movement.
Other actresses of color don’t fare well either. Michelle Yeoh was the first Southeast Asian actress to ever be nominated for an Oscar, let alone win one, when she picked up the Best Actress win for Everything Everywhere All At Once in 2022. Berry presented her with the award and to this day they remain the only two actresses of color to win Best Actress. Clearly, something must change.
“I knew it was bigger than me,” Berry said about her Best Actress win. “Right? But even if it’s not, I was chosen in that moment to be a beacon of possibility. And I do think it served that purpose.”
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