August 14, 2016 marks actress Halle Berry‘s 50th birthday. According to IMDB, Halle Berry was born in Cleveland, Ohio. Her father, Jerome Jesse Berry, was an African-American hospital attendant. Her mother, Judith Ann (Hawkins), who is Caucasian, is a retired psychiatric nurse. Halle has an older sister named Heidi Berry, as well.
Halle first came into the spotlight at 17-years-old when she won the 1985 Miss Teen All-American Pageant, representing the state of Ohio and, a year later, when she was the first runner-up in the Miss U.S.A. Pageant. After participating in the pageant, Halle became a model. It eventually led to her first weekly TV series, 1989’s Living Dolls, where she soon gained a reputation for her on-set tenacity, preferring to “live” her roles and remaining in character even when the cameras stopped rolling. It paid off when she reportedly refused to bathe for several days before starting work on her breakthrough role as a crack addict in Spike Lee‘s Jungle Fever (1991).
Since then, she went on to have an extremely illustrious career, starring in films like 1992’s Boomerang with Eddie Murphy, 1994’s The Flintstones, 1995’s Losing Isaiah with Jessica Lange, and 2000’s X-Men, in which she played “Storm.”
Happy Birthday Halle!
