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Monster's Ball star Halle Berry is the first African-American actress to win an Oscar, pioneering the way for more women to follow.

As Jinx in Die Another Day (2002), she also changed the image of the Bond ‘girl’ to Bond ‘woman’ - a grown-up beauty capable of taking on 007. Twenty-one years later, Halle returned, bolder than ever with another spy thriller Our Man From Jersey.

Here are five secrets you likely don’t know about the superstar.

1. Catwoman (2004) 

They can’t all be Oscar winners. Halle Berry had the dubious honor of winning a 2005 Razzie award for her portrayal of Batman’s romantic interest Catwoman. The Razzies, or the Golden Raspberry Awards, are handed out for the worst cinematic projects and performances of the year. Past winners include Paul Verhoeven for Showgirls and Fifty Shades of Gray producers Dana Brunetti and Michael De Luca.

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Berry took her award for Worst Actress like a champion - attending the award ceremony with her Oscar in one hand and Razzie award in the other. "I never in my life thought I would be up here winning a Razzie," she told the cheering crowd. "You don't win a Razzie without a lot of help from a lot of people." First, she thanked the film studio: "Thank you for putting me in a piece of sh**, God-awful movie." She also thanked her manager, who she brought on stage, and the 20 writers behind Catwoman. She later burned the Razzie. “If you can't be a good loser, then you don't deserve to be a good winner. So I went there and made fun of myself. I had a great time and then I set that thing on fire."

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2. Bruised (2021)

Halle knows people think she’s sailed through life because of her looks but she was a victim of domestic abuse. Born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1966, Halle was named after a local department store, Halle Bros. Her mother was a victim of domestic violence and Halle has spoken openly about her own struggles with an abusive partner. She was 55 when she took the lead role in the Netflix movie Bruised, and trained four to six hours a day to learn boxing, judo and jujitsu, and worked on the capoeira skills she used in Catwoman. Bruised was also her directorial debut.

“Fighting is something that I just know so much about on a personal level and on a career level. I understand what it is to fight and not be heard,” Berry told the New York Times. “I understand the trauma of life that makes one want to fight, need to fight, have to fight… I understand being marginalized as a Black woman and the anger, resentment, fear, and frustration that comes with all of that.”

Berry decided to become an actress when she was taking improv lessons at Second City in Chicago and an instructor suggested she become a professional. Until then, Berry had been a beauty queen contestant, waitress, bartender, and model but hadn’t considered acting as a profession. “That was a big moment in my career.”

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‍3. Jungle Fever (1991)

Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever was her first movie, starring alongside Spike and up-and-coming actor Samuel L. Jackson. It was a life-changing moment and Spike Lee was inspiring, she said. "He was very tenacious and he had the ability to be completely authentic and tell a story from his point of view. And his point of view wasn't always the popular point of view back then."

He also allowed Halle to tell her story. "I really got to shed my physical self, my beauty pageant image. He gave me a wonderful opportunity to show that I was a real actor - that I had been working, I had been studying, and I was more than a shell that I had walked around in," Hally told Vanity Fair. “And I have spent my whole career trying to prove that in many ways.” 

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4. Die Another Day (2002) 

Halle Berry, who has now turned herself into a fitness guru as well as an actress, was always fighting fit. She took on the role of CIA officer Jinx because race wasn’t relevant to the plot: “And that feels good - that my color doesn’t precede me.” Berry wanted to play a sexy, smart woman who was also a formidable opponent for Bond, and that meant she needed to be in top shape. “I had to get really down and dirty, and fight, and throw knives, and flex swords, and shoot a gun, and fly a plane, and stop it from crashing, and be tied up … yeah, physically this was very challenging.”

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5.  Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)

Halle played Ginger Ale, later known by her alias Agent Whiskey, a member of Statesman. She acted as the tech expert for the secret spy organization Statesman, just as Merlin did for Kingsman. She loved the casting: “No one has ever cast me before to play the cerebral, geeky, brainy type.” Halle moved from modeling to acting but there were a few speed bumps along the way. Berry famously turned down the role of Annie in Speed, which went to Sandra Bullock.

In the X-Men series, Halle plays Storm, a fictional superhero that appeared in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. She is a mutant with the ability to control the weather and is a member of the X-Men, initially created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby - comic book artist and spy - in September 1963. Halle is looking forward to more sequels as Storm but, in between shooting, she’s also starring in - yep, another spy movie - Netflix’s Our Man from New Jersey - a blue-collar James Bond flick. Can another Oscar be far behind?