Halle Berry: On her own terms

PHILADELPHIA -- Halle Berry doesn't care. She doesn't. Not anymore. And she doesn't mind saying so either. Believe it or not, she turned 40 last year. And the stress of making everybody happy, the need to please? Gone and gone. She used to live under the weight of the world. Then she moved to another planet. Now she can work without shame or regret or justification. In a conversation a few weeks ago at a Philadelphia hotel, Berry was the one who brought up "Catwoman ," a movie about which the less said the better.

But she says it anyway: "Once I had a string of successes, from 'Dorothy Dandridge ' " -- the 1999 HBO movie for which Berry won an Emmy and a Golden Globe -- "then to the Oscar" -- for "Monster's Ball in 2002 . "I had this run, a really good run where everything I did seemed to be golden. Then 'Catwoman' came along, and everything wasn't, all of a sudden."

But Berry embraced her so-called failure.

"If you can't be a good loser, and lose graciously and laugh at yourself and take criticism," she says, pointing out that she lost a lot as a girl (contests, student council positions, etc.), "then you don't deserve to win anything. When you win, you want all the pats on the back. But in order to experience that, you also have to be woman enough to stand and take it when people say, 'You know what? Not so good.' " Berry, of course, did more than stand there and take it. She stood, in person, at the Razzie Awards two years ago and accepted a worst actress trophy for "Catwoman."

Some people turn lemons into lemonade. Halle Berry takes a turkey and makes Thanksgiving dinner.

But she can be riled. For instance, when she hears she's talking to a movie critic, she makes a hissing sound then asks if she can speak freely, which she does, fast and animatedly, like she'd been waiting all day for this one.

"Here's what I wish. I wish movie critics would sometimes lighten up and understand why movies were made. Not every movie is meant to be an intellectually moving, powerful experience. Some movies are made for fun. Some are made for silliness. Some are made to munch on popcorn and escape."

By "some movies," Berry might be talking about her latest, "Perfect Stranger ," a whodunit that opened Friday to mixed reviews. Berry plays a New York newspaper reporter who stretches the bounds of professional ethics to go undercover as a temp angling to prove an advertising mogul murdered an acquaintance of hers. For the mogul, think Donny Deutsch crossed with a pinch of Donald Trump , but played in the film by Bruce Willis .

The film is playfully lewd (at one point Berry spritzes some perfume under her dress) and has a ludicrous trick ending that Berry now says, with a lot of humor, was a big draw in the first place. Like some of her other vehicles, this is the sort Berry doesn't expect critics to like.

She was unconvinced by the argument that, just like everybody else, the critic she was talking to just wants to have a good time whenever he goes to a movie. "But are you really able to do that?" she asked. "I don't think you can."

Berry conceded, with a laugh, that, like a lot of movie stars, she has a contentious relationship with reviewers: "I can't win for losing. I know where I stand." This brings us back to where Berry is at this point in her life. She said she just wants to have fun. "It's not like I'm a doctor and I'm saving lives. It's not like whether I don't do good on any given day is going to cost someone their life. That 's not the kind of weight my job carries. So I don't want to put that kind of weight on me."

Yet, quite blithely, she says movies are not a hobby for her, either; it's how she secures a future. She explains that she deserves "the right" to make movies for reasons that feel important to her and not have to make excuses for them or explain why she did them -- and particularly not as a black woman.

Berry is the most famous African-American actress in the world. She grew up in Ohio, the daughter of a white mother and black father , and got her start in beauty pageants. And it took her years to feel comfortable enough to exceed the racial restrictions she felt were placed on her in the movies. "I never let that responsibility sit down on my shoulders," she said. "It felt like bondage to me. It was boring."

She said this like a businessperson, one who's completely satisfied with the way things are. She doesn't sound defensive because, as far as she's concerned, she has nothing to defend. Incidentally, her attire for this pleasant exchange is business-y but with a whiff of sex. She wore a flatteringly cut dark-blue pinstriped pantsuit. Her hair was bone straight ( she wore it long and fiddled with it often). The creamy silk blouse beneath her jacket exposed enough cleavage to seem like a dare to stare.

Berry seems innocent of any temptation, though. It's as if, in her mind, she exists from the shoulders up. The rest is your problem. She's a wonderful actress that way -- and more arresting in person than any of her movies or many magazine covers can properly prepare you for. Her beauty, though, is a hassle her acting hasn't exactly overcome.

She does her best work when glamour is beside the point, when she can be spent and wrenched, fed-up and strung-out, when she can approximate mortality, despair, and, especially, anger. This was true in "Monster's Ball ," 1995's "Losing Isaiah ," her small part as Samuel L. Jackson's crackhead girlfriend in Spike Lee's "Jungle Fever ," and in "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge ," where she struck a fine balance between glamour and a deep human hurt.

To explain her seemingly unlimited capacity for conveying fury and articulating pain, Berry leaned forward and said, "I have a very deep well," without going far down in it. But she said it with an insinuating laugh that implies her public past -- the bad marriages, the shaky mental health, that hit-and-run conviction -- then added, "It's nice to be able to exorcise those demons." With its downs, ups, and publicized personal dramas, Berry's career bears a vague resemblance to Elizabeth Taylor's .

But Berry, unlike Taylor, can be intentionally funny, something she wants to show in a movie. Her only true attempt at comedy was " B.A.P.S." a shoddy, bawdy attempt at a kind of screwball comedy, with Berry as a ghetto-fabulous waitress on the loose in the Beverly Hills. At some point, she does a mean Mike Tyson impersonation. If she wants to do another comedy, she said she'll have to get it off the ground herself. "Surprise, surprise," she said, "No one thinks of me that way." But she was very funny when she hosted "Saturday Night Live" in 2003, particularly in a shout-out sketch to the talk interludes of the all-female funk band Klymaxx .

She's also convinced she'll never work with, say, Woody Allen . And her suspicion is probably right: She's not Scarlett Johansson, and she's 40.

Shockingly -- or not, actually -- Berry said she is still frequently considered only for characters written or conceived as black. So doing a movie like 2003's supernatural thriller "Gothika " or "Perfect Stranger," regardless of whether they're any good, represents a kind of moral victory. She's fought hard to make the same kind of bigger budget popcorn movies that Charlize Theron and Sandra Bullock do. That sounds like a dubious achievement, but it means something to Berry.

Still, there are hurdles. This fall she'll appear with Benicio Del Toro in the "Things We Lost in the Fire ," directed by Susanne Bier , the Dane who made "Open Hearts " and "After the Wedding ." But she wasn't initially considered for the part of a widow raising two daughters. For one thing, if the filmmakers cast Berry, what, racially, would the kids be?

This was an actual consideration that amused but still exasperated her. "The kids would be me!" she said. "The kids would be who I am!" She lamented that these are film-industry conversations she still has to have. But, Berry said, this is where an Oscar comes in handy, even though she's reluctant to play that card. "It makes getting in that room a little easier. It forces people to see past my color. If you don't like me after you meet me, that's OK. But at least give me the chance."

So it's not simply that she doesn't care. Some things she cares deeply about, because she has to. Yes, she's reached a comfortable cruising altitude both spiritually and in her occupation, but she still lives in the world and is very much affected by its tougher realities. As she put it, with a faint smile, "I'm not bulletproof."

Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com. For more on movies, go to boston.com/ae/movies/blog.