Berry claws her way to the bottom
Is there some unwritten rule that after winning a leading-role Academy Award, actors and actresses have to make a string of lousy movies?
Oh, there are those who don't let the gold statuette cloud their ability to choose worthwhile scripts. Tom Hanks followed his back-to-back wins for "Philadelphia" and "Forrest Gump" with such hits as "Apollo 13," "Toy Story," and "Saving Private Ryan." And all Katharine Hepburn did after winning her second Oscar for "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," was win two more, for "The Lion in Winter" and "On Golden Pond."
But then there's Nicolas Cage, who, after garnering a best actor trophy for "Leaving Las Vegas," has made enough odious movies to overflow a landfill, including "Snake Eyes," "Gone in 60 Seconds," and "Captain Corelli's Mandolin." Julia Roberts walked away with a best actress Oscar for "Erin Brockovich" in 2001 and has since muddied up her filmography with such dreck as "Mona Lisa Smile" and "The Mexican." And two-time winner Kevin Spacey, well, let's not even get into Kevin Spacey.
To that list, let us now add 2002 best actress winner Halle Berry, currently sifting through the unsalvageable remnants of her latest box-office bomb, "Catwoman." One of the year's worst reviewed films, "Catwoman," which cost nearly $90 million to make, earned a relatively paltry $17 million in its opening weekend and debuted at No. 3. Compare that to Matt Damon's "Bourne Supremacy," which cost about $75 million and garnered $53.5 million during its first three days of release.
"We're a little disappointed," admitted Dan Fellman, president of domestic theatrical distribution at Warner Bros., which released the film. But studio executives certainly can't be any more disappointed than Berry, who accepted a project that was wisely declined by Ashley Judd and Nicole Kidman.
"Catwoman," whose filmmakers substitute Berry sashaying about in dominatrix loungewear for any semblance of a plot, is Berry's second high-profile flop since she won the Oscar in 2002 for her performance in "Monster's Ball." It follows last year's "Gothika," a dismal and downright stupid thriller. Yes, Berry has also starred in two recent hits, 2002's "Die Another Day" and 2003's "X2," but both films were the latest installments of proven franchises that probably would have succeeded without Berry's presence. (And let's face it -- the "X-Men" movies, like the Marvel comic book series on which they are based, are all about Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, not Berry's Storm.)
What Berry has been doing is squandering an Oscar moment that, during her speech, she called "so much bigger than me." In becoming the first African-American woman to win a best lead actress award, she accepted her trophy on behalf of Dorothy Dandridge, the first black best-actress nominee for her performance in 1954's "Carmen Jones," as well as on behalf of veteran actresses Lena Horne and Diahann Carroll.
Berry also mentioned her contemporaries Jada Pinkett Smith, Angela Bassett, and Vivica A. Fox and said the award was "for every nameless, faceless woman of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened."
Two years after Berry's tear-soaked speech, it's difficult to imagine exactly what door Berry opened, especially for herself, as her taste in scripts has been as questionable as her taste in husbands. With her Oscar win, Berry seemed poised to become Hollywood's first bankable black actress, someone who could compete with Kidman and Renee Zellweger for the best parts. Instead, she has chased unchallenging, poorly conceived parts in laughably bad films that have enhanced neither her box-office viability nor her career as a worthwhile actress.
After years as one of Hollywood's most beautiful women, Berry took the emotionally strenuous role of a grieving wife and mother in "Monster's Ball." Downplaying her looks (although there was a much-discussed sex scene with costar Billy Bob Thornton), she was suddenly regarded as a fine actress with more range than she had ever before displayed on the big screen.
Perhaps Berry isn't best suited for big Hollywood films. "Monster's Ball" was an indie film, and Berry has often been at her best in TV movies, especially HBO's "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge," which won Berry a mantel's worth of awards and helped set the stage for her historic Academy Award win.
Berry's career redemption may be in the works. She's currently filming an adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's masterpiece, "Their Eyes Were Watching God," produced by Oprah Winfrey's company with a script by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks. Playing the challenging role of Janie, one of 20th-century American literature's great heroines, could be exactly what Berry needs to remind people that she won her Oscar not because Hollywood bowed to political correctness, but because she deserved it.
Renee Graham's Life in the Pop Lane column runs on Tuesdays. She can be reached at graham@globe.com.
