BY DERON DALTON
Growing up in the ‘90s means I got to experience the “Golden Age” of Black Hollywood. Of course, at that time—like today and most definitely before the ‘90s—there was a lack of representation of Black actors and filmmakers in Hollywood.
Though also like nowadays, Black cinema—hood movies, comedies, family dramas, romances and biopics—still thrived.
Despite Hollywood still lacking in representation of Black filmmakers, a lot of progress has been made, especially in the 2010s and 2020s, thanks in part to the ’90s.
Unlike previous generations, where Black talent was limited to being typecast in racist stereotypes on the silver screen, the ‘90s is regarded as the Golden Era of Black Cinema and Black Hollywood. We got to experience the talent of at least a handful of Black A-list male actors: Lawrence Fishburne, Morgan Freeman, Danny Glover, Cuba Gooding Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, Martin Lawrence, Eddie Murphy, Will Smith, Wesley Snipes, Denzel Washington and more.
And while there were even fewer parts for them, there was still an array of talented Black actresses—Angela Bassett, Loretta Devine, Whitney Houston, Vivica A. Fox, Robin Givens, Whoopi Goldberg, Janet Jackson, Regina King, Queen Latifah, Jenifer Lewis, Nia Long, Brandy Norwood, Lela Rochon, Jada Pinkett-Smith, Lynn Whitfield, Vanessa L. Williams and Alfre Woodard—who became prominent and powered through the ‘90s. Each of these women gave us iconic characters for the culture and cinema that Black people revere to this day.
And then there was Halle Berry. Often regarded as one of the most beautiful women to ever grace this earth who both benefited from pretty privilege and yet had to fight for respect as an actress for that very same reason. And oh—because she, too, is still a Black woman. So her beauty—Black beauty—came with conditions.
Nevertheless, Berry persevered and remained resilient throughout the ‘90s. By the early ‘00s or the aughts, as I like to call the decade, she reached new heights of success as a blockbuster-level box office draw, movie star and acclaimed actress.
At this time in the early aughts, I was going through the growing pains of middle school and being a repressed, confused queerling. Watching Berry’s drive and determination to succeed despite the odds stacked against her also inspired me to strive to do the same. She not only became one of my queens, again as a deeply closeted gay Black boy, but she also became my “pretend” crush or my “celebrity beard,” as I now call her in my adulthood. Berry, the A-list movie star and Academy Award-winning actress, became my security blanket. My protector.
Before I break down even further how she became my middle school celebrity beard and what a beard even is, let’s dive into the iconiness of Berry.
After getting her start competing in pageants in the mid-‘80s, she co-starred on the short-lived sitcom “Living Dolls” in 1989. Her breakout supporting role came in 1991, playing crack addict Vivian, the girlfriend of fellow addict Gator (Samuel L. Jackson), brother of Wesley Snipes’ lead character, architect Flipper Purify, who enters into an adulterous interracial love affair in Spike Lee’s “Jungle Fever.”
After co-starring as the leading lady in the romantic comedies “Strictly Business” (late 1991) and “Boomerang” (1992), she played the sex pot secretary Sharon Stone in “The Flintstones” in 1994. Her supporting role, a play on the name of actress Sharon Stone, is considered groundbreaking. She played a Black woman allowed to be a seductress in a predominantly white movie. And while some might say there’s a thin line with Black women being over-sexualized in a mainstream, predominantly white film, Berry was simply considered sexy, which is something Black women outside of Black cinema were rarely viewed as in mainstream media. Also, Berry’s role was initially considered as a white character.
Berry would go on to show her dramatic chops on both the small and silver screens. Berry fought hard for the role of the titular character in “Alex Haley’s Queen” in 1993, a miniseries about Haley’s biracial paternal grandmother, born to an enslaved woman and a white Plantation owner, who struggles with her identity as a young woman in the deeply racist, post-Civil War, Reconstruction-era South.
The miniseries was nominated for seven Emmy Awards in 1993, including Ann-Margret for Outstanding Supporting Actress, and was the sole Golden Globe nominee. Surprisingly, Berry was not nominated at either awards ceremonies. She won only Outstanding Lead Actress in a Television Movie or Miniseries at the 1995 NAACP Image Awards.
After starring in another TV movie, “Solomon & Sheba,” in ’95, she played another crack addict in “Losing Isaiah” in ’96. Though this time she played co-lead with two-time Academy Award-winning actress Jessica Lange, and she played a young woman who left her baby boy in an alley while high on crack-cocaine, got arrested, got her life together, and wanted her son back from the white nurse and her family who adopted him.
In 1996, she starred in thrillers “Executive Decision” and “The Rich Man’s Wife.” The former was a box-office hit, while the latter received negative reviews and flopped.
Her next set of films has gone on to become cult classics: “B*A*P*S” (1997) and “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” (1998), while “Bulworth” garnered some critical acclaim in 1998.
Berry starred alongside Natalie Desselle in the buddy comedy “B*A*P*S,” playing dancers who move to LA and end up scamming a dying millionaire, only to instead become Black American princesses. The biographical drama “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” also had an all-star Black female cast with Berry, Fox and Rochon starring as three women claiming to be late singer Frankie Lymon’s wives (played by Larenz Tate).
In the ‘90s, Berry’s career already had patterns: her fight to be recognized as a serious actress, to get the parts she wanted, and even to win roles intended for white actresses.
Berry proved her resilience as an actress once again in the late ‘90s, fighting for years to get a biopic about her idol, Dorothy Dandridge, made. Every major Hollywood studio passed on the film. But Berry’s fight led her to HBO. Serving as one of the executive producers, Berry starred as the titular icon, who became the first Black woman to be nominated for Best Actress (in one of the best competitive lineups, I might add) for playing the titular seductress in “Carmen Jones” in 1955. The TV film highlighted her struggle to rise to “stardom” in a segregated, systemically racist pre-Civil Rights Movement America. The tagline sums it up perfectly: “right woman, right place, wrong time.”
Though Dandridge didn’t have the career she deserved, her becoming the first Black woman to be nominated for a lead Oscar paved the way for Berry and so many other Black actresses. Dandridge’s nomination came 15 years after Hattie McDaniel, in a groundbreaking move, won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her controversial yet iconic role as Mammy in “Gone with the Wind,” making her the first Black performer to win a competitive Oscar.
“Carmen Jones” was released four years before “The Defiant Ones,” the film that garnered Sidney Poitier his first Best Actor Oscar nomination before winning in 1964 for “Lilies of the Field.” Dandridge and Poitier would go on to star in “Porgy and Bess” together in 1959. Due to the lack of non-stereotypical representation in Hollywood and the control director and producer Otto Preminger had over her career, Bess was one of Dandridge’s very few starring roles after her breakthrough in “Carmen Jones.”
Dealing with a career in decline, racism in Hollywood, domestic violence, financial struggles and depression, Dandridge tragically passed away from an apparent overdose of antidepressants in 1965 at the young age of 42.
Berry’s performance as a groundbreaking yet underappreciated actress was what finally helped her gain recognition. The “Introducing Dorothy Dandridge” actress went on to win an Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG award for her performance as Dandridge in 2000.
The new millennium also marks the beginning of one of Berry’s most iconic roles, playing superheroine and Mistress of the Elements Storm in FOX’s “X-Men” franchise, starting with the summer blockbuster “X-Men” in 2000.
In 2001, she co-starred in another summer blockbuster with Hugh Jackman, where she famously received a $500,000 bonus for doing a topless scene in “Swordfish.”
After co-starring in a couple of blockbusters and garnering praise for her performance as Dandridge, Berry went on to win an Oscar just short of two years later, becoming the first Black woman to win Best Actress. In late 2001, “Monster’s Ball” was released in limited theaters in New York and Los Angeles, before getting a wide release in Feb. 2002.
The independent drama starring Berry and Billy Bob Thornton chronicles an unlikely connection between a grief-stricken mother, Leticia Musgrove, whose son dies in a hit-and-run, and a prison guard, Hank Grotowski, whose son died by suicide. She later learns about the guard’s role in the execution of her husband and his own racist past, while also having a racist father.
Berry won the Oscar the same year Washington won Best Actor for “Training Day,” and Politier won an honorary Oscar. 2002 was nicknamed the “Black Oscars,” as it was the first and so far only time both leading Oscars went to Black performers.
Smith was also nominated for Best Actor for portraying Muhammad Ali in “Ali.” And Goldberg hosted the 74th Academy Awards.
Berry gave one of the most memorable Oscar speeches. In her speech, she opened with:
“This moment, so much bigger than me. This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll. It’s for the women [who] stand beside me: Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett, Vivica A. Fox. And it’s for every nameless faceless woman of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened,” said Berry as the audience applauded. Thank you. I’m so honored. I’m so honored, and I thank the Academy for choosing me to be the vessel.”
Watch Berry’s Oscar-winning speech below.
While she received praise for her performance as a grieving mother in “Monster’s Ball,” she also received some backlash from critics for its explicit sex scene with a racist white character (played by Thornton), and some questioned why she had won for that role.
Berry has defended the sex scene. To be fair, her character had just gone through a traumatic experience, and so has Thornton’s character, losing his son, with whom he wasn’t a very good father. Their shared trauma brought the two unlikely characters together.
During a recent promotional tour for “Crime 101” in 2026, Berry sat down with Conan O’Brien for his “Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend” podcast and talked about how the “infamous” sex scene in “Monster’s Ball” was either going to be something incredible or end her career.
“People around me said, because at that time I hadn’t done nudity, and the sex scene was like a big, like it had a big red light on it. It was such a big part of that movie that people close to me said this could really hurt you,” said Berry while on the podcast.
“This could not be a good thing. It was a little small movie, no money. It’s a little indie. It could be all for nothing,” added Berry rementing what those close to her warned about the sex scene. “I had the feeling that I related to the character. I wanted to play the part and I said, ‘If this ends my career, then I’m ending my own career on my own beliefs.’”
Watch the interview below.
Berry’s career continued with playing another heroine. This time, she was Bond girl Jinx in the 2002 blockbuster “Die Another Day,” and in the 2003 supernatural horror movie, she plays a psychiatrist accused of killing her husband and being admitted to the hospital where she worked in “Gothika.”
Though she told The Cut, the Oscar win didn’t do much for her career:
“That Oscar didn’t necessarily change the course of my career. After I won it, I thought there was going to be, like, a script truck showing up outside my front door,” proclaimed Berry. “While I was wildly proud of it, I was still Black that next morning. Directors were still saying, ‘If we put a Black woman in this role, what does this mean for the whole story? Do I have to cast a Black man? Then it’s a Black movie. Black movies don’t sell overseas.’”
Even after winning an Oscar and starring in blockbusters, Berry still faced the same struggles as a Black actress. And though Berry dealt with criticisms of being over-sexualized as a Black woman and the lack of parts even after winning the Academy Award in the early aughts, a young gay Black boy fell in love with her during his middle school days.
I started sixth grade at Grandview Middle School in Grandview, Mo., in Aug. 2001. So much happened in the late summer of 2001: Aaliyah passed away in a plane crash on Aug. 25, and then Sept. 11 shook the U.S., let alone the world. These events, alongside starting middle school, made adolescence even more stressful.
And like something out of “Big Mouth,” I was going through changes, puberty to be exact. Not yet fully understanding who I was, I was surrounded by energy and people trying to define that for me.
While the “is or isn’t he” chatter started in elementary school, it was definitely amplified as I moved into adolescence and into those middle school days.
I distinctly remember at the beginning of my sixth-grade school year, a girl came up to me, introduced herself, and quickly asked a question which felt more like a proclamation placed upon me, and said something along the lines of, “I heard you act like a girl. Are you gay?” They wore me out with those statements and questions. Wore. Me. Out.
And while it was subconscious, my love for Berry and how I emphasized it in middle school would protect me somewhat from that speculation. Because how could I be gay, I’m in love with the Halle Berry.
By eighth grade, that film history I listed above of the iconic Berry was embedded in my brain. I became a mega fan: after watching “Introducing Dorothy Dandridge” on HBO at 10 years old, I saw her play my favorite X-Man, Storm, and Berry, opening the door for Black women and women of color, by winning the Best Actress Oscar. And everyone in my class and the teaching staff knew I was in awe of Berry.
So, for the eighth-grade auction, they made sure there was an autograph from the movie star I could bid on. Don’t ask me how the bidding system worked; I’m sure it had something to do with points awarded based on grades, attendance, or students’ productivity.
The auction took place at the end of the school year, before eighth-grade graduation in May 2004. I knew I had it in the bag, even when others jokingly bid on the autograph. I won it and ran up on the stage, making it into a whole event.
Unfortunately, I lost track of that autograph. But at the time, it meant the world to me. While I was in love with Berry, it meant something completely different from what people perceived it to be.
While Berry is a gorgeous woman, there was no confusion about my “crush.” Yes, I allowed people to think I was into Berry because it kept them somewhat off my back about my sexuality, which was not something I was ready to face at 14. She became my celebrity beard, meaning my love for her helped shield me from constant teasing, bullying or speculation about my sexuality.
Pink News recently defined what exactly a beard is, in depth:
“A beard is a person who – knowingly or unknowingly – dates or marries a gay person so that that individual can hide their sexuality. By appearing as though they are part of a heterosexual relationship, the idea was to negate any possibility of them being seen as queer.”
The article added:
“The history of the slang word is synonymous with the terms lavender dating/marriage – or front dating.”
So in my case, because she was simply my idol, no one got hurt by playing into my “crush” on Berry.
So in retrospect, there was no “crush.” I simply revered her the way gay men revere our pop culture queens. Her beauty, her grace, her talent, her work ethnic, her resilience, her perseverance—all of her inspired me to follow my own passions and remain strong and fierce even through challenging times like the early aughts and hell…like now.
In 2005, Berry starred as “Catwoman,” which was critically panned and grossed only $82.4 million globally on a $100 million budget, according to Box Office Mojo. She won a Golden Raspberry Award (a Razzie) for Worst Actress in 2025 and, famously, attended the ceremony to accept the award. She found the humor in it. And even in these moments of “failure,” she managed to stand by her work, or she picked herself up and kept going. That moment spoke to her character. This wasn’t a woman afraid to fail. This was a woman with longevity because her losses never deterred her.
Berry continued to star in blockbusters like the “X-Men” franchise through 2014, “The Kingsman: The Golden Circle” (2017) and “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum” (2019). She remained an acclaimed actress in films “Things We Lost in the Fire” (2007) and “Frankie & Alice” (2010).
She continued to dabble in TV projects, including the TV movie “Their Eyes Were Watching God” (2005), and starred on the sci-fi series “Extant” for two seasons in 2014-2015.
She gained instant cult-classic status with thrillers like “The Call” (2013) and “Kidnap” (2017). She starred in, produced and directed “Bruised” (2020), garnering praise for playing a disgraced UFC fighter trying to make a comeback. Her producing credits only increased following the success of “Introducing Dorothy Dandridge.”
Speaking of “The Call,” the Halle Berry “distress wig” lives on! Fans showed up to movie screenings of “Never Let Go” in 2024, wearing their versions of her “distress wig,” another moment Berry found humor in. But hey, even in the distress wigs, the point is her characters must persevere in even the most dire situations.
Hence, Berry’s perseverance never ended. She still uplifts Blackness and advocates for better representation of Black actors and filmmakers in Hollywood. She is still bringing her all, whether it’s on social media, in a promotional interview or with her latest project.
Berry most recently starred alongside fellow Marvel actors Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo in “Crime 101,” now in theaters, as of Friday, Feb. 13.
Watch the trailer below:
So thank you, Miss Berry, for being my celebrity beard all those years ago, when I was just a lonely gay kid in awe of you, and for being so darn unstoppable at your craft.
