Before we even get into the movie Frankie and Alice that is in re-release this weekend, let’s clear something up. Halle Berry’s life is all good right now. The wife to new Revenge star Olivier Martinez and mother to Nahla, 5, and son Maceo, 5 months, the 47-year-old star is having her best life.
“Don’t believe the hype,” Berry told the Tom Joyner Morning Show regarding rumors she and Martinez were estranged.
“Life could not be better. I think people just need drama from me every once in while. My life was too quiet and calm so they had to make something up. Life is too good for me right now.”
Got that, tabloids, blogs and TMZ?
Now, not only is Berry promotiong her upcoming Steven Spielberg produced TV show Extant, she’s also got X-Men: Days of Future Past on the way this summer and the re-release of her movie Frankie and Alice which was actually released a few years ago.
“It was a little independent movie that I spent a lot of years trying to make, “ Berry said. “When we first finished it, it went the festival route and that’s when I first talked to you guys about it. It got a few award nominations and then kind of fizzled away. Little movies like this are hard to get distributed today. Big movies that make a lot of money are the name of the game. This little movie just took some time finding a home.”
In Frankie and Alice, Berry stars as Frankie an L.A. based go-go dancer in the 70’s dealing with multiple personality disorder. Phylicia Rashad, Stellan Skarsgard and Chandra Wilson also star.
“It’s about something real. It’s not about fantasy. It’s not action. It’s not a comic book. These are the movies that used to be big back in my day like One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, and those kind of movies that people went to see. It’s about something. It’s about mental illness. It’s about a woman’s struggle to survive. It’s a true story about a real woman and therefore it’s inspiring. “
Berry says she prepared for the role by studying people who have the disorder which also appeared in the movies in films like Three Faces of Eve and the 70’s TV miniseries Sybil, starring Sally Field.“I spent a lot of time looking at videos of real people who suffer from this disorder. Some people have 30 plus personalities living inside their body, if you can imagine that. Our character, Frankie, has two.
An 8-year-old child and a racist white woman lived inside this black inner-city go-go dancer. When I heard the story, I said ‘That can’t be real.’ But it was this woman’s struggle of how she dealt with this and got all her fragments together. Now she’s one of the best teachers at one of the most prestigious universities in the country. She survived.”
Now that she’s settled and happy, will Berry have more kids?
“I wasn’t planning on having the second one that I have,” she laughs. “So I can’t say that I am or not. God will determine that one.”
