Los Angeles, Feb 3 (IANS) Actress Halle Berry believes that she had paved the way for diversity for Academy Awards when she bagged the Best Actress Award in 2002.
The 49-year-old actress, who won the Best Actress Award for her role in the 2001 film “Monsters Ball”, says it’s heartbreaking not to see another woman of colour receiving the award since then, reports femalefirst.co.uk.
Speaking about the controversy surrounding this year’s ceremony because of the lack of black actors nominated in any of the categories, she said: “I believed that in that moment, that when I said in my acceptance speech, ‘The door tonight has been opened’, I believed that with every bone in my body that this was going to incite change because this door, this barrier, had been broken.
“And to sit here almost 15 years later, and knowing that another woman of colour has not walked through that door, is heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking because I thought that moment was bigger than me. It’s heartbreaking to start to think maybe it wasn’t bigger than me. Maybe it wasn’t. And I so desperately felt like it was.”
The actress also insisted that actors and filmmakers have a “responsibility” to look at the wider picture and not forget the “importance and the involvement” of people from all races and backgrounds in making history and being a part of American culture today.
“It’s really about truth-telling. And as filmmakers and as actors, we have a responsibility to tell the truth. And the films, I think, that are coming out of Hollywood aren’t truthful,” the “Catwoman” actress said.
“The reason they’re not truthful, these days, is that they’re not really depicting the importance and the involvement and the participation of people of colour in our American culture,” she added.
