Profile of the Day: Halle Berry

Halle Berry

Happy birthday, Halle Berry! Today the famous actress turns 48. She was born Maria Halle Berry in Cleveland, Ohio to Judith Ann Hawkins, a psychiatric nurse, and Jerome Jesse Berry, a hospital attendant in the same psychiatric ward where her mother worked. Her parents divorced when she was four years old.

Before becoming an actress, Berry entered several beauty contests, winning Miss Ohio USA in 1986. She has tackled a wide variety of roles throughout her career, from portraying the mutant superhero Storm in the X-Men series to the troubled wife of an executed murderer in the film Monster’s Ball. She made history by becoming the first African American woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress.

Did you know Berry has English ancestry? Her maternal grandmother, Nellie Dicken, was born in Derbyshire, England in 1911.

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Image: Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons