Before fame and Oscar acclaim, Halle Berry was one of 15 girls sleeping in a bean bag chair in a crowded one-bedroom apartment.
During a visit to Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, the Never Let Go star spoke about the origins of her career, when she made the leap from the beauty pageant circuit to professional modeling. The change came when a pageant organizer in Ohio encouraged her to move to Illinois and join a modeling agency.
“She said, ‘Come to Chicago, I’ll get you a modeling job and make a lot of money. Just take it easy for a year and figure out what you’re going to do after that,'” Berry recalled. “I said, ‘Okay.’
Unfortunately, the reality was not so picturesque. Or, as Berry puts it, “a lot of crap.”
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She explained: “She never mentioned that she was sleeping on the floor in a one-bedroom apartment with about 15 other girls in beanbags. I had no idea what that would be like. And then I realized, “Ah!”
Shepard, whose long-running interview podcasts often begin by asking guests to recall their rise to fame, noted that Berry’s origins are part of a trend.
“I’ve heard this story several times,” he said. “People move in, they have managers, they have agents, and then they get there and they’re like, ‘Oh, wow, they all live here.’
“I joked, ‘Maybe we all live in one bathroom together,'” Berry said.
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After six months in a small apartment, Berry was ready for a change. “I pulled one of the girls aside and said, ‘Let’s go find our own place.’
While living with a roommate, Berry took his first steps into the world of acting. This was an almost accidental transition.
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“What got me into acting was going to The Second City,” the actress said, adding that the world-famous star that launched comedy luminaries such as Bill Murray, Steve Carell and John He explained that he took several classes with a famous comedy troupe. Belushi, Jordan Peele, Tina Fey. But for Berry, at first it was just a way to kill time.
“I was bored. I didn’t think I was going to have a career as an actor. I just wanted something to do at night. I also heard that there were a lot of interesting and handsome men going there.” she added. ”
Berry eventually made her acting debut on ABC’s Who’s The Boss spin-off Living Dolls. Although the film only lasted one season, the actress got her start here before landing her breakthrough role in Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever.
Her career continued on an upward trajectory, appearing in the 1991 comedy Strictly Business, the Eddie Murphy rom-com Boomerang, and the live-action version of The Flinstones, and she was cast in the 1999 HBO biopic She received critical acclaim for her role as Dorothy Dandridge in “Introduction to Dorothy Dandridge”. . For this film, Berry won an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. Two years later, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Monster’s Ball, becoming the only black woman to win the award to this day.
You can hear Berry follow in the footsteps of fame on Armchair Expert above.
