Halle Berry recently spoke to Entertainment Weekly to mark the 20th anniversary of “Catwoman” and admitted that she’s always hated being the sole target of the movie’s backlash. The infamous comic book movie was a box office flop, and Berry was awarded a Razzie for her performance. She famously showed up to the ceremony with her Oscar in hand to accept the trophy for worst performance.
“I felt like it was Halle Berry’s failure, but I didn’t make it alone,” Berry told the publication. “All these years, I’ve absolutely carried it.”
“Catwoman” opened in theaters on July 23, 2003, to negative reviews, with many critics agreeing it was one of the worst comic book movies ever made. The film, directed by Pitof, starred Berry as Patience Phillips, a meek cosmetics company employee who dies and is reborn as Catwoman. Berry was interested in making the film because it was sold as a complete reinvention of the Catwoman character, but right off the bat she was underwhelmed by the story, which finds Catwoman investigating a deadly cosmetics beauty line.
“I always thought the idea of Catwoman saving women from a face cream felt a bit soft,” Berry said to Entertainment Weekly. “All the other superheroes save the world; they don’t just save women from cracked faces. I always knew that was a soft superhero plight, but at that time in my career, I didn’t have the agency I have today or belief that I could challenge that, so I went along with it.”
Berry said “things went smoothly [for me]” during production and “it was a great shoot,” adding: “I had the time of my life. I worked my ass off to embody a cat in so many ways, psychologically and physically. I never thought it went awry; I just thought that maybe it wouldn’t feel as big as other movies because the plot stakes aren’t as high.”
The tides against “Catwoman” began to turn when a set photo leaked online revealing Berry’s costume, which comic book fans derided for not being accurate. The movie replaced the character’s trademark catsuit (immortalized on screen by Michelle Pfeiffer in Tim Burton’s “Batman Returns”) with a more scantily-clad outfit.
“That was the first thing that started the negativity,” producer Denise Di Novi told EW. “It was an early shot before we’d perfected it. It was so different than what people were used to in the other movie. A catsuit, by definition, everything is covered up. We thought it’d be cool to be more rock & roll and bare. Halle was famous for wearing a bikini in her Bond movie, and we were like, why not? People had such a reaction to it, which is so ridiculous. We had the famous Colleen Atwood helping us with just that costume. Halle had a lot of input. I still think it’s cool and a lot more modern!”
Berry added, “Fans were upset about the suit. It was something different, but in our minds, why keep remaking Catwoman if you’re not going to take risks and bring something different to it? The beauty was that it was better suited for my version of her, my body, who I was, and my sensibilities.”
“Catwoman” didn’t win back any fans when it finally opened in theaters. Critics piled on the film, with Variety writing in its own review: “Warner Bros. plummets to the dimmest recesses of popcorn inanity with ‘Catwoman,’ which, even by the standards of comic book adaptations, requires a suspension of disbelief surely beyond most audiences.”
“I didn’t love [the backlash],” Berry told EW about the reaction. “Being a Black woman, I’m used to carrying negativity on my back, fighting, being a fish swimming upstream by myself. I’m used to defying stereotypes and making a way out of no way…It didn’t derail me because I’ve fought as a Black woman my whole life. A little bad publicity about a movie? I didn’t love it, but it wasn’t going to stop my world or derail me from doing what I love to do.”
“I hated that it got all put on me, and I hate that, to this day, it’s my failure,” Berry later added. “I know I can carry it. I still have a career 20 years later. It’s just part of my story. That’s okay, and I’ve carried other failures and successes. People have opinions, and sometimes they’re louder than others. You just have to keep moving.”
Head over to Entertainment Weekly’s website to read the “Catwoman” 20th anniversary oral history in its entirety.
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