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Halle Berry Biography

Halle Maria Berry (born August 14, 1966[1]) is an American actress, former fashion model, and beauty queen. Berry has received Emmy and Golden Globe awards for Introducing Dorothy Dandridge[2] and an Academy Award for Best Actress in 2002 for her performance in Monster's Ball, becoming the first and still only woman of African-American descent to have won the award for Best Actress. She is one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood and also a Revlon spokeswoman.[3][4] She is attempting to expand into the production side of Hollywood.[5]

Before becoming an actress, Berry entered several beauty contests, finishing runner-up in the Miss USA (1986), and winning the Miss USA World 1986 title.[2] (Under pageant rules in effect at that time, the first runner-up at Miss USA automatically competed at Miss World.) Her breakthrough feature film role was in the 1991 Jungle Fever. This led to roles in The Flintstones (1994), Bulworth (1998), X-Men (2000) and its sequels, and Die Another Day. She also won a worst actress Razzie award in 2005 for Catwoman and accepted the award in person.[6]

Divorced from baseball player David Justice and musician Eric Benét, Berry has been dating French-Canadian model Gabriel Aubry since November 2005. Their first child, a girl named Nahla Ariela Aubry,[7] born on March 16, 2008.

Berry was born Maria Halle Berry, though her name was legally changed to Halle Maria Berry in 1971.[8] Berry's parents selected her middle name from Halle's Department Store, which was then a local landmark in her birthplace of Cleveland, Ohio.[9] Her mother, Judith Ann (née Hawkins),[10][11] is a Caucasian psychiatric nurse, and her father, Jerome Jesse Berry, was an African-American hospital attendant in the same psychiatric ward where her mother worked and later became a bus driver.[9][12] Berry's maternal grandmother, Nellie Dicken, was born in Sawley, Derbyshire, England, while her maternal grandfather, Earl Ellsworth Hawkins (an American), was born in Ohio.[13] Berry's parents divorced when she was four years old and she was subsequently raised by her mother.[9] Berry has said in published reports that she was estranged from her father since her childhood.[14][9]

Berry attended Bedford High School, and worked in the children's department at Higbee's Department store. She subsequently studied at Cuyahoga Community College. In the 1980s, she entered several beauty contests, winning Miss Teen All-American in 1985 and Miss Ohio USA in 1986.[2] Other entries included Miss USA (first runner-up in 1986 to Christy Fichtner of Texas, the second of the Texas Aces), and sixth place in Miss World 1986 (the winner being Trinidad and Tobago's Giselle Laronde). she was the first black American Miss World entrant.[15] In the Miss USA 1986 pageant interview competition, she said she hoped to become an entertainer or to have something to do with the media. Her interview was awarded the highest score by the judges.[16]

In 1989, during the taping of the short-lived television series Living Dolls, Berry lapsed into a coma and was diagnosed with diabetes mellitus type 1.[17][9]

Source: Wikipedia