Halle Berry says Oscar diversity controversy is ‘heartbreaking’

In the 14 years since Halle Berry won the Best Actress Oscar for Monster’s Ball, no other African American actress has won the award. She called that fact “heartbreaking,” as the Oscars have been criticized for not nominating any African American actors for the second year in a row.

While at the Makers Conference in Los Angeles on Feb. 2, Berry said that she really hoped her win would open doors for other actresses.

“Honestly, that win almost 15 years ago was iconic,” Berry said, reports The Guardian. “It was important to me, but I had the knowing in the moment that it was bigger than me. I believed in that moment when I said: ‘The door tonight has been opened.’ I believed with every bone in my body that this was going to incite change because this door, this barrier, had been broken.”

However, the fact that no other African American actress has won Best Actress since then is a big disappointment, according to Berry.

“To sit here almost 15 years later, and knowing that another woman of colour has not walked through that door, is heartbreaking,” she said. “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.”

Since the Oscar nominations were announced, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has announced moves to make the Academy more diverse. Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith and Spike Lee have all said that they won’t attend the 88th Oscars on Feb. 28.

Many critics of the Academy have noted that Hollywood itself has continued to fail to present minorities in more mainstream films. Berry added that Hollywood films don’t really reflect the truth of American diversity.

“It’s really about truth-telling,” Berry said. “And as film-makers and as actors, we have a responsibility to tell the truth. The films, I think, coming out of Hollywood aren’t truthful. And 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.”