Halle Maria Berry was born on August 14, 1966, in Cleveland, Ohio. She is an American actress and former fashion model. Her mother, Judith Ann Hawkins, was a psychiatric nurse, and her father, Jerome Jesse Berry, worked in the same hospital as an attendant in the psychiatric ward.

Her parents divorced when she was four years old, and she was raised by her mother along with her older sister, Heidi Berry-Henderson.

Halle Berry began her career as a model and participated in several beauty contests, finishing as the first runner-up in the Miss USA pageant and coming in sixth in the Miss World 1986. Her breakthrough film role was in the romantic comedy Boomerang in 1992, alongside Eddie Murphy. This led to roles in The Flintstones in 1994 and Bulworth in 1998.

She gained critical acclaim for her role in the television film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge in 1999, for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award.

Halle Berry became the first African-American woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Monster's Ball in 2001.

She also played Storm in the X-Men film series, the henchwoman of a robber in Swordfish, Bond girl Jinx in Die Another Day, and the title role in Catwoman. Despite some mixed reviews in her career, she continued to take on notable roles in films like Perfect Stranger, Cloud Atlas, and The Call.

In 2014, she launched her production company, 606 Films, and has been involved in various projects, including the CBS science fiction series Extant. She made her directorial debut with the Netflix drama Bruised in 2020.

Halle Berry has been married three times. She was married to baseball player David Justice from 1993 to 1997, singer-songwriter Eric Benét from 2001 to 2005, and actor Olivier Martinez from 2013 to 2016. She has two children, a daughter named Nahla Ariela Aubry with model Gabriel Aubry, and a son named Maceo-Robert Martinez with Olivier Martinez.

She has received numerous awards throughout her career, including a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and an Academy Award.