After making history as the first Black woman to win the Best Actress Oscar, Halle Berry laments how no Black woman has won it since.
2002 was a momentous occasion in Academy Award history as Halle Berry became the first Black woman to win the Best Actress Oscar for her role in Monster’s Ball.
Since her victory, a total of 12 Black actors have since been nominated for the same award but none have triumphed.
This lack of success for Black women at the Oscars hasn’t gone unnoticed by Berry, who says it’s absolutely “heartbreaking” that she still remains the only Black woman to win Best Actress as of 2021.
Chatting to The Mirror about her 2002 Oscar victory, Berry says “the heartbreak I have is because I really thought that night meant that very soon after that, other women of colour, Black women, would stand beside me.”
“Now it’s been 20 years and no one has, and so every time Oscar time comes around, I get very reflective and I think, ‘Well maybe this year, maybe this year. It has become heartbreaking that no one else has stood there.”
While Berry laments the lack of Academy Award success for Black women since her breakthrough win, she is well aware of what her win meant for Black women and how it impacted them going forward.
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“That moment mattered because so many people have come up to me over the years and told me how that moment shifted their thinking about what they could achieve, what they aspire to do, or what they believed they could do – that they were touched by that moment,” said the actress.
“That is the value that I know is real.”
Check out Halle Berry winning her Best Actress Oscar at the 2002 Academy Awards:
