Halle Berry Revealed The Reason She Accepted Her Razzie In Person, And It Makes A Lot Of Sense
Years ago, Halle Berry decided to accept a Razzie Award in person. It was a rare move at the time, but she had a great explanation for why
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Back before we got in deep with the Marvel Extended Universe and DC Cinematic Universe of comic book movies, there were other actors and actresses giving the superhero thing a shot in relative one-off movies and smaller franchises (sometimes both). Some were hits and some were anything but. One of the latter varieties was Catwoman starring Halle Berry which was basically an unmitigated disaster. And because it simply didn’t work on any level, in an almost comically bad way, the film ended up taking home a Golden Raspberry (Razzie) Award for its lack of effort. But in a showing of humility, Halle Berry actually showed up to accept the award. Recently she explained why she stood up and took some lumps for such a bad showing in Catwoman.
Speaking to Vanity Fair (via THR), Halle Berry explained why she decided to accept the Razzie Award, going on stage and giving a speech about her performance in Catwoman. She appeared in person for the award and gave a satirical speech, both playing into the nonsense of the ceremony, but also poking fun at herself in the process. Considering very few actors or actresses want to be associated with a Razzie, because it means your movie sucked, Berry went the opposite direction.
In detailing why she decided to go in-person Halle Berry gave a fairly endearing answer about what it means to retain some humility even when something went way wrong. In fact, the way Halle Berry talks about the situation, it’s easy to see why she’s been one of the more accomplished actresses in the game over the course of her career. Heck, she’s won plenty of “real awards” in this industry so it didn’t make it terrible to accept a “fake” one as well. Check out what Halle Berry had to say:
“I went to the Razzie Awards because I feel like we all take ourselves so seriously…if we get the Oscar, we somehow are made to feel like we’re somehow better than everybody else, but we’re really not…If you find yourself face to face with a Razzie, does that mean you’re the worst actor there ever was? Probably not…If I can show up to collect an Oscar when you’re honoring me, I can certainly show up to collect a Razzie when you say, good try, but do better…I always learned that if you can’t be a good loser, then you don’t deserve to be a good winner. So I went there and made fun of myself…”
When it comes to reasoning, this is about as sound as you can get considering the nature of award-giving in the industry. Halle Berry is commenting on the lack of ego needed to maintain in an industry that is under a constant form of criticism. Sure, there is praise out there as well if you are good, but stinkers are going to come along. Halle Berry seems to understand this pretty well.
Heck, she had a little fun with the Razzies even in this instance because she brought along her Oscar Award to her acceptance speech. She had won it for Best Actress in Monster’s Ball in 2002. Meanwhile, Catwoman came out a few years later in 2004. Would Berry have taken the same tact if these things had happened in reverse? It’s hard to say, though it would have been much harder. You can see her Razzie acceptance speech below:
And sure, Halle Berry bombed pretty hard with Catwoman at the time. The movie, meant to capitalize on her fame and the name-brand of the character, was a highly-anticipated film at the time. But on its $100 million budget, it managed back only $82 million at the box office. Critics treated it even worse with the 9% Rotten Tomatoes score about as low as you’ll see from a movie with a budget this big. At least Halle Berry can look back on it as a learning experience.
