Halle Berry

Halle Maria Berry (born Maria Halle Berry; August 14, 1966) is an American actress. Berry won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the romantic drama film Monster's Ball (2001), becoming the only woman of African American descent to have won the award.

Berry was a teenage finalist in national beauty pageants, worked in modeling, and began acting on television in 1989. Film roles in Jungle Fever (1991), directed by Spike Lee, and in Boomerang (1992), starring Eddie Murphy, first brought her notice. She starred with Jessica Lange in Losing Isaiah (1995), a drama about adoption, before earning acclaim for her portrayal of film star Dorothy Dandridge, the first African American to be nominated for a best-actress Oscar, in the television film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999). That performance earned her Emmy awards by primetime emmy awards and Golden Globe awards by golden globes, usa