Halle Berry tells of Hollywood deceit

04 February 2016 - 02:44 By Staff reporter

Halle Berry thought she'd scored a game-changer for black and minority talent when she became the first black woman to win a best actress Oscar back in 2002 - but it didn't work out that way. The first black woman to win was also the last.Berry is quoted by the UK's The Guardian as saying on Tuesday: "To sit here almost 15 years later knowing that another woman of colour has not walked through that door is heartbreaking."Berry won the award in 2002 for her role as a poor Southern woman who falls for Billy Bob Thornton's troubled prison guard in Monster's Ball. She said she never imagined that the door she opened would remain shut for the next 14 years, reported The Guardian.In her 2002 acceptance speech at the Oscars, she said: "The door tonight has been opened" and suggested that her win would open the floodgates for black actors to find success in Hollywood."I believed with every bone in my body," she said this week, "that this was going to incite change because this door, this barrier, had been broken."The current row over diversity in Hollywood was sparked when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences failed to nominate a single actor from a black or ethnic minority background for the Oscars for a second year running.The academy has since announced radical rule changes aimed at doubling the voting representation of women and ethnic minorities by 2020.["Hollywood is] really about truth-telling," Berry said. "As film-makers and as actors we have a responsibility to tell the truth. The films coming out of Hollywood aren't truthful [because] they're not really depicting the importance and the involvement and the participation of people of colour in our American culture."..

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