Actress Halle Berry complained about the fact that no black woman has won the Academy Award for Best Actress since she did for “Monster’s Ball” in 2002.
“I’m still eternally miffed that no black woman has come behind me for that best actress Oscar, I’m continually saddened by that year after year,” the 58-year-old actress said in an interview with Marie Claire published Tuesday. “And it’s certainly not because there has been nobody deserving.”
Berry mentioned Andra Day in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” and Viola Davis in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” as two candidates she thinks deserved the honor.
“Would I rather have awards or a kickass, robust, soaring career as a black woman? I’d take the kickass, soaring career over an award any day,” she added.
The “Catwoman” actress spoke on this topic before, telling Variety in 2020 how upset she was over it.
“It’s one of my biggest heartbreaks,” Berry said at the time. “The morning after, I thought, ‘Wow, I was chosen to open a door.’ And then, to have no one … I question, ‘Was that an important moment, or was it just an important moment for me?’ 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.”
“Just because I won an award doesn’t mean that, magically, the next day, there was a place for me,” she went on. “I was just continuing to forge a way out of no way.”
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The Academy Awards previously announced that beginning in 2024, a film will only qualify for Best Picture if it meets specific diversity criteria in two of four diversity areas. The Academy’s new guidelines cover “on-screen representation, themes and narratives” and “creative leadership and project team,” as well as so-called industry access opportunities and audience development diversity, as The Daily Wire originally reported.
A poll conducted by The Daily Wire found that the majority of respondents (63%) believe that “films should solely be judged on their artistic merits,” while only 24% of respondents said that “diversity should be a significant factor” in a film’s nomination.
