‘It’s a needed voice in the world’: Halle Berry on her directorial debut

Published

3 years ago

November 17, 2021

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Halle Berry’s directorial debut may include some of the movie tropes we’re familiar with.

A fighter who’s been written off returning to the ring, a parent trying to turn things around when an estranged child comes back in to their life and a woman manipulated by the man who supposedly loves her.

But Berry’s gritty drama Bruised sees the themes reframed and told from the perspective of a black woman – which isn’t something audiences will be so familiar with.

The star – who made history when she became the first and only African-American woman to win the best actress Oscar in 2002 – says now she’s made the movie she appreciates the value of telling the story from her point of view.

“I think now having had this opportunity to tell the story from my gaze – a black female – I think I realise even more having done it, how important it is, how important it is to get a diverse story out in the world,” Berry told Sky News.

“And as I’ve been talking to people about it and having them say it was hard hitting and it was, ‘wow, that was harsh’, and I’m thinking, ‘well, yeah, imagine living it, you know, it’s hard for you to watch it, imagine if that’s your reality’.”

“And the truth is, this is the reality of so many people, and so bringing some light to this subject really is important, and it takes people who’ve lived it, who understand it from this point of view, meaning black females, to tell these stories, and I think it’s a needed voice in the world.”

In the film Berry plays aging MMA fighter Jackie Justice, who accepts an offer to get back in the ring while also dealing with the unexpected return of her 6-year-old son.

The character is fighting on all fronts – fellow women in the ring and various demons and issues outside the sport.

Ultimately the film is about the power of women – a subject Berry wants to see more of on screen.

“As women we’ve been marginalised, you know, and especially as black women, we’ve been severely marginalised,” she said.

“So this is a way of not only getting our power back, but it’s also putting our stories out there and acknowledging that our stories have value, our lives are valuable, our experiences are valuable, our points of view are valuable.

“And this is one way for us to sort of get that out into the world through art in this way.”

It’s almost two decades since Berry’s historic Oscar win, and since then there’s been pressure on Hollywood to be more inclusive, with the MeToo movement and open conversations about how to address a lack of diversity in the industry.

The 55-year-old says she’s certainly seen things change during her career.

“I mean, look around – when I started 30 years ago, there were very few women of colour doing the things that we’re doing today, I look around, they’re everywhere today, and that’s true, they are.

“We’re living a new reality than we were when I started – I was making a way very much out of no way, I was the only one, I was one of the few, and now there’s many of us out here living our dreams, you know, telling stories, having great roles to play.

“So yeah, I do think things are changing – more female directors than ever before, producers… Is change slow? Most change is, but I see great strides and I see how we’re growing and the growth is really real.”

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Despite her years of experience on sets, Berry said taking on the role of director has given her a fresh perspective on the way that films are made.

She says it will definitely change how she sees things as an actress in the future.

“Once you wear this skin and you actually are in charge of an entire production, you realise now why certain decisions were made,” she explained.

“I mean, when I was just an actor, I used to always wonder ‘now why would they schedule the scenes like this? This makes no sense, this is making our job as actors indelibly harder’ – now having been on the other side, I do understand now there’s a reason that has nothing to do with you, actor.

“There’s a bigger thing at play here, there’s other departments, other elements that go into putting a day together and budgeting a film and boarding a film – it’s not always about what’s going to be best for the actors to perform their roles.

“So I now will never ask a director again ‘and why did you schedule this like this? This makes no sense’. Never again.

Bruised is available to stream on Netflix.

Entertainment

Star of The Hills and Made In Chelsea says family’s homes have burnt down in LA wildfires

Published

53 mins ago

January 8, 2025

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Star of The Hills and Made In Chelsea says family's homes have burnt down in LA wildfires

A reality TV personality known for appearing on shows like The Hills and Made In Chelsea has told Sky News her family have lost their homes in the California wildfires.

Stephanie Pratt, a model and the sister of fellow reality TV celebrity Spencer Pratt, lives in the Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, where more than 30,000 people have fled their homes due to the fast-moving blaze.

Los Angeles fire chief Anthony Marrone said on Wednesday that the Palisades fire is still growing and that “well over 5,000 acres” have been burnt.

At least two people have been killed so far, with around 1,000 buildings destroyed.

Follow latest: Two killed in LA wildfires

California governor Gavin Newsom earlier declared a state of emergency over the four wildfires in the south of the state.

Speaking to Sky News from London, an emotional Ms Pratt said: “It’s just so crazy, I had no idea what was happening.

“I talked to my dad yesterday and he said ‘The Palisades is burning’. He said that he was at my brother’s house on Chautauqua [Boulevard] and they were just watching the flames come.

“The firefighters came and said you got to leave.”

‘I don’t know if my house is there’

Ms Pratt said her parents and brother Spencer, who like her starred in the reality series The Hills, were safely evacuated from the area.

However, the 38-year-old added that “all of the phones are disconnected” and that she doesn’t know what had happened to her home.

“I talked to my neighbour last night and she told me that [Palisades Charter High School] had burnt down, and that’s directly behind me, and so had Gelson’s Supermarket which is adjacent,” she said.

“I just can’t reach anyone to see if my house is okay. I just Googled it and it said that it’s destroyed and terrible… I don’t know if my house is there.”

‘This is where they raised their kids’

When she asked her dad about Spencer, 41, who is married to 38-year-old Heidi Montag – another co-star of The Hills – Ms Pratt said he told her “I’ve never seen him like this”.

“I’m assuming he’s just completely catatonic,” she added. “We don’t care about the material things or anything like that, but this was their family home.

“This is where they raised their two little kids.”

The Palisades fire is one of five blazes currently burning in southern California – evacuation orders were in place on Tuesday in Altadena after another fire, called the Eaton fire, started near a nature preserve.

A third blaze, called the Hurst fire, also ripped through Sylmar in the north of the city.

And according to the state department Cal Fire, two more blazes – the Woodley fire in Los Angeles and Tyler fire in Riverside – broke out on Wednesday.

Entertainment

School Of Rock wedding: Co-stars marry decades after first meeting on set of film

Published

2 hours ago

January 8, 2025

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School Of Rock wedding: Co-stars marry decades after first meeting on set of film

Two School Of Rock co-stars, who met at the age of 10, have got married.

Caitlin Hale and Angelo Massagli, who played Marta and Frankie respectively in the 2003 classic alongside Jack Black, tied the knot in New York on Saturday.

The couple brought some of the original cast of the film, which centres on a pretend substitute teacher turning a group of musically gifted school children into a rock band, together to celebrate their nuptials.

Posting on Instagram, Hale, 33, shared various images of the day, including a photobooth picture with a handful of their former cast mates.

The former actress, who now works as a sonographer, wrote under the post: “Special thank you to everyone who contributed to an unforgettable day!”

Rivkah Reyes, who played bass player Katie in the film, also posted about the wedding, sharing a video on TikTok.

The clip, set to Stevie Nicks’s Edge Of Seventeen, included cameos from Brian Falduto, who played Billy, Joey Gaydos Jr, who played Zack, and Aleisha Allen, who played Alicia, among others.

The use of the song was a nod to one of the scenes from the film where Black and Joan Cusack, who plays headteacher Rosalie Mullins, sing the song in a bar.

“Celebrating the marriage of Caitlin & Angelo with my forever fam #schoolofrock #wedding,” Reyes wrote alongside the video, which showed them all dancing together.

After appearing together in the film the only contact Hale and Massagli had was through a WhatsApp chat set up with the entire cast, according to The New York Times.

The pair then both left show business and coincidentally reconnected while studying in schools in Florida.

Massagli, 32, who now works as a lawyer for TikTok, according to The Times, told the paper the familiarity they both had due to working together when they were younger “cut through some of those early relationship hurdles”.

The couple got engaged in June 2023.

Entertainment

‘Music is back’ as Taylor Swift helps drive record UK sales

Published

3 hours ago

January 8, 2025

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'Music is back' as Taylor Swift helps drive record UK sales

UK music sales hit a 20-year high of £2.4bn in 2024, helped by pop megastar Taylor Swift’s latest album, and driven by streaming and the vinyl revival, figures show.

Revenues from recorded music reached an all-time high, more even than at the peak of the CD era, according to annual figures from the digital entertainment and retail association ERA.

Total consumer spending on recorded music – both subscriptions and purchases – topped the previous record of £2.2bn in 2001, ERA said.

Takings from streaming services including Spotify, YouTube Music, and Amazon rose by 7.8% to a little over £2bn.

Almost £200m was spent on vinyl albums, an annual uplift of 10.5%, while CD album revenues were flat at just over £126m.

Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department was the biggest-selling album of the year, aided by her record-smashing worldwide Eras tour.

More than 783,000 copies were bought, nearly 112,000 of them on vinyl – making it 2024’s biggest-selling vinyl album.

The biggest single of the year was Noah Kahan’s Stick Season, generating the equivalent of 1.99 million sales.

ERA chief executive Kim Bayley said 2024 was “a banner year for music, with streaming and vinyl taking the sector to all-time-high records in both value and volume.

Ms Bayley called it the “stunning culmination of music’s comeback which has seen sales more than double since their low point in 2013. We can now say definitively – music is back.”

Despite the increasingly strong performance by the British music industry, artists are said to be receiving less money.

Experts have said the musicians make less than people would think because of the role of streaming – platforms do not normally pay artists directly and divide any owed payments among the rights holders of songs.

Music revenues grew by 7.4% in 2024, while video rose by 6.9%, and games fell by 4.4%, according to preliminary figures.

Subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV grew by 8.3% to £4.5bn – almost 90% of the sector’s revenues.

Deadpool & Wolverine was the biggest-selling title of the year, with sales of 561,917 – more than 80% of them sold digitally.

Despite the games sector’s 4.4% decline last year, it remains nearly twice as large as the recorded music business.

Full game sales saw a drop-off with PC download-to-own down 5%, digital console games down 15% and boxed physical games down 35%, in favour of subscription models which grew by 12%.

EA Sports FC 25 – formerly known as Fifa was once again the biggest-selling game of the year, generating 2.9 million unit sales, 80% of them as digital formats.