AddHalle Berryto the list of stars who don't feel like winning an Oscar changed their career necessarily for the better.
TheCrime 101star recently opened up toThe Cutabout her historic win for Best Actress for her performance inMonster's Ball. The win was the first, and remains the only, one for a Black woman in the category.
"That Oscar didn't necessarily change the course of my career," Berry told the outlet. "After I won it, I thought there was going to be, like, a script truck showing up outside my front door. 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.'"
In the same interview, Berry also revealed that she once advised fellow starCynthia Erivo— who has twice been nominated in the category for her roles inHarrietandWicked— not to place any real weight on winning an Oscar.
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"You goddamn deserve it, but I don't know that it's going to change your life," she said she told Erivo. "It cannot be the validation for what you do, right?"
Berry previously toldMarie Clairein 2024how disappointed she was that her historic moment didn't have more of a snowball effect for the industry, saying she's "eternally miffed that no Black woman has come behind me for that Best Actress Oscar. I'm continually saddened by that year after year. And it's certainly not because there has been nobody deserving."
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TheCatwomanstar is one of several actresses to open up about how winning an Academy Award didn't necessarily have the intended career effect. Melissa Leo, who won Best Supporting Actress forThe Fighterback in 2011,shared her brutally honestthoughts about her win, including that she believes it has, in fact, had a negative impact on her career.
"Winning an Oscar has not been good for me or my career," she said recently in a reader Q&A withThe Guardian, adding, "I didn't dream of it, I never wanted it, and I had a much better career before I won."
And Marcia Gay Harden, who won Best Supporting Actress for the 2000 moviePollock, famously told theLos Angeles Timesin 2003that the award was "disastrous on a professional level" for her.
"Suddenly the parts you're offered and the money become smaller. There's no logic to it," she added.
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