BY: DAVID COLEN
Originally Published: April 1, 2007

THE LIFE of Halle Berry has been both wonderfully successful and decidedly painful. Her story is filled with despair, disgust, anger and sorrow, as well as triumph over it all. It begs to be told, to every child who ever came from a broken home, every black kid who was ever taunted in school, anyone who ever contemplated suicide, anyone who ever dreamed about making it big. It surely will be made into a motion picture one day. Bank on that.

It begins in Cleveland, Ohio, where she was born precisely four decades ago in the same hospital as Dorothy Dandridge, the brilliant-yet-terribly-troubled actress Berry portrayed in a made-for-TV movie that aired in 1999 on HBO. And it winds through the American heartland, high into the hills of West Hollywood where she is about to complete construction of a massive, multimillion dollar estate.

There was little money around during Berry's formative years. Her father, Jerome, walked out when she was four. That left her mother, Judith, a nurse who worked in the psychiatric ward of the same veteran's hospital for 35 years, to raise both Halle and her older sister, Heidi. To label Berry's father an asshole would be too kind. Jerome Berry was an alcoholic who cheated on and physically abused his wife. He also beat Heidi; Halle Berry maintains to this day that she was never a victim of his wrath.

And to this day, she still refers to him as a "bum."

Jerome returned briefly when Halle was 10, but his stay was short-lived. He stuck around for less than a year. That was the last time they've been face-to-face. Shortly after his final departure, the family moved from their rundown neighborhood to an all-white suburb called Bedford, about 11 miles southeast of the city. It was there the preadolescent Berry girls were teased unmercifully by their peers for having a mixed-race set of parents; Jerome being black, Judith a white woman from Liverpool, England.

Heidi lashed out in response to the torment; Halle dedicated herself to academics and extracurricular activities. Like participating on the cheerleading squad and working for the student newspaper. She was even voted prom queen, although a cadre of students alleged Berry and her friends had stuffed the ballot box. The competition became official when school administrators opted for a coin-toss, which Berry won.

With stellar grades, all the ambition in the world, and drop-dead-gorgeous looks, Halle Berry could have chosen, and would have been successful on, any career-path. That much is certain. She pursued modeling, but her foray into the business was as whimsical as it was unexpected.

At 17, Berry was entered into a Miss Teen pageant in the Buckeye State – totally unbeknownst to her. It was a boyfriend who submitted her photos and bio. She won the event, as well as the subsequent national contest into which she gained automatic entrance. From there, Berry was crowned Miss Ohio, but she came up short in the Miss USA event.

She enrolled in and quickly dropped out of nearby Cuyahoga Community College, where her intention was to study broadcast journalism. Berry decided to move to Chicago in the hopes of gaining full-time work as a model. Within two months, she was broke and pleading with her mother for a loan. Judith Berry, who went along on the 400-plus-mile ride, refused to help. That left a massive rift between the women, and it left Halle Berry living in a homeless shelter.

"She drove me there, but I don't think she ever thought it would pan out," recalled Berry. "After a month or two, I ran out of money. I said, 'Mom, I hate to ask you, but could you send me some money?' And she said no. She told me to figure it out or to come home. I was so mad. I didn't speak to her for a year-and-a-half."

WELCOME TO MIAMI
With all that's happened in Berry's life, it's difficult to begrudge her for clamming up during interviews. The late-winter daylight is fading fast in Coral Gables as Halle Berry makes her way to the AMC Sunset Place Theater. She's resplendent in high-heels and a skimpy, black-brown-and-white, low-cut dress. Enough to make even the most hopeless ED patient rock-hard. Her hair is blown-out and loaded with highlights, trailing all the way past her bare shoulder blades. A vision of perfection.

She's in town, along with co-star Giovanni Ribisi, who gained widespread notoriety playing Frank Buffay, the dimwitted younger brother of Phoebe in the NBC sitcom Friends, to promote Perfect Stranger.

In it, Berry plays a New York Post reporter named Rowena Price who quits her job practically in the opening scene after an editor nixes her exposé about a homosexual tryst between a U.S. Congressman and an intern. She then ostensibly pursues the killer of a promiscuous old girlfriend, all the while posing as a temp employee at an advertising agency. Naturally, she knows all along who committed the crime.

There are obvious similarities between Rowena Price and Halle Berry. For one, they're both the product of an interracial union. And both witnessed domestic violence in their immediate families. Plenty of other overt parallels exist between Berry and the characters she's portrayed through the years.

Berry was cast as the unlucky Leticia Musgrove in Monster's Ball, for which she won a Best Actress Academy Award, and found herself portraying a woman who was briefly out on the streets just as she had been in the Windy City. And as Angela Lewis in the Eddie Murphy production Boomerang, the role that truly launched her into the cinematic stratosphere, Berry portrayed a young woman disgraced by an unfaithful lover - just as she had been by both of her ex-husbands, David Justice and then Eric Benét.

When I pointedly ask which of her big-screen alter egos she identifies with most, Berry looks me square in the eyes, smiles and politely says, "None of them."

It's a response any gentleman could accept. Berry cares not to elaborate, as I know I've struck a nerve. And then, so as not to seem curt, she continues, "If you want to know the real truth, all of them have a bit of me in them, though."

NEVER GIVING UP
There's an undeniable inner-strength to Halle Berry. Can't be any other way. Not after she was humiliated by two philandering spouses. She required a restraining order to keep away the first one, Justice, who was a right fielder for the Atlanta Braves throughout most of his 14-year, big-league career. The second one, Benét, a musician, had the temerity to blame his infidelity on a sex addiction.

Yet she continues to immerse herself in long-term relationships. For the better part of the last year, Berry has been dating a fashion model named Gabriel Aubry, a cartoonish-looking blond who is nine years her junior.

It was on the day that the divorce from Justice became official that Berry headed down to her garage with her two dogs and a bottle of wine, intent on taking her own life. She turned on the ignition and sat there for a half-hour before realizing the pain a suicide would cause her mother. "If I do this, then I'll be no better than my father," Berry recalled thinking to herself. "All of the good things that I tried my whole life to do would instantly be undone."

At the time, Berry had no way of knowing that two years later she would play Dandridge, and in the process, win both critical acclaim and a Golden Globe. At age 42, Dandridge, who was the first black woman ever nominated for an Oscar, was found dead after overdosing on pills.

Berry has been cast on more than one occasion as a desperate, down-and-out character. And dating all the way to her debut as a crack-addicted prostitute in Spike Lee's epic, Jungle Fever, she'd never done any on-screen nudity. That changed with the 2001 release of Swordfish, but it came at a price – to the studio. On top of her $2 million salary, Warner Brothers needed to ante another $500,000 to convince her to appear topless.

It's a compromise that seemed to come more naturally the next year for Berry, who revealed her breasts during a steamy love scene with Billy Bob Thornton in Monster's Ball. Perhaps it's a sign she has begun to take herself a lot less seriously. Or perhaps it's a sign she is willing to start enjoying a bit more the adulation constantly bestowed upon her, both as a sex symbol and as a performer.

Berry seems neutral to the fact she's routinely included on lists of the world's sexiest women by cheesy mags like People, FHM and Maxim. "I'm always flattered by the compliment, but I get much more excited when someone comments on my work," says Berry. "Or who I really am. My spirit, my character. I have nothing to do with the physical. I take no credit for that."

More proof of the notion that Berry could be taking herself a lot less seriously was her appearance last February to accept a Razzie award in the Worst Actress category for her performance in Catwoman. She even parodied her own tear-filled Oscar speech from 2002.

Berry says she wants be a mom, but doubts she'll wed for a third time. "Absolutely, I want children. I will adopt if it doesn't happen for me naturally. And even if it does, I will adopt."

When she'll have time for motherhood is anyone's guess. She will continue doing publicity for Perfect Stranger for the next month. It will debut on April 13. She was in Miami for less than 24 hours, jetting off to Philadelphia immediately after welcoming the audience and high-fiving the entire front row at Sunset Place.

And she has signed on for four more films, two set for release later this year, "Things We Lost In The Fire" and "Tulia," and another two in 2008, "Class Act" and "Who Is Doris Payne?"