Halle Berry calls her historic Oscar win ‘one of my biggest heartbreaks’

Actor became the first and only black woman to win an Oscar for Best Actress when she took home the award in 2002

Halle Berry has called the aftermath of her Oscars win one of her “biggest heartbreaks”.

Berry became the first and only black woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress in 2002 when she took home the Oscar for her performance in the film Monster’s Ball.

The actor told Variety of the landmark moment: “I wanted to believe it was so much bigger than me. It felt so much bigger than me, mainly because I knew others should have been there before me and they weren’t.”

Despite her high hopes, no other black woman has won the esteemed award since Berry.

The 54-year-old said, “I thought Cynthia [Erivo] was going to do it last year. I thought Ruth [Negga] had a really good shoot at it too.”

“I thought there were women that rightfully, arguably, could have, should have. I hoped they would have, but why it hasn’t gone that way. I don’t have the answer,” she said.

Berry also revealed that winning the award surprisingly didn’t help her career like she initially thought it would, saying, “It actually got a little harder. They call it the Oscar curse. You’re expected to turn in award-worthy performances.”

The Catwoman star added: “I think it’s largely because there was no place for someone like me. I thought, 'Oh, all these great scripts are going to come my way; these great directors are going to be banging on my door.' It didn’t happen.

“Just because I won an award doesn’t mean that, magically, the next day, there was a place for me. I was just continuing to forge a way out of no way.”

Berry is one of only 12 black actors to receive an Oscar nod for Best Actress since the awards began in 1927.

Dorothy Danbridge was the first to receive a nomination in 1954, with other notable nominees since then including Diana Ross, Whoopi Goldberg, Angela Bassett, Quvenzhane Wallis, Gabourey Sidibe and Viola Davis. 

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Most recently, Cynthia Erivo was nominated last year for her performance as Harriet Tubman in Harriet.