Berry, Halle
1966- · Contribution: 2002
Actress
First, and to date only, Black woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress
Portraits are AI-generated interpretations, not photographs.
Quick facts
- Born
- 1966
- Active since
- 2002
- Category
- Arts, Music & Entertainment Tech
- Best known for
- First Black Best Actress winner"Monster's Ball"Barrier-breaking Oscar night
Impact on the world
Berry's win shattered a barrier that had stood since the Academy Awards began, in a category no Black woman had ever won. Her victory became a landmark of Hollywood history.
An alternative history
What Would the World Look Like Without It?
One contribution. Many possible consequences. No single-person origin story.
Imagine this selected contribution absent, not the person or the entire field. The areas below are reflection prompts related to this discipline, not verified chains of direct dependency.
Sources
- Source lookupFind
HISTORY.com
Exact source links open the cited record. Source lookups help locate legacy references whose original records did not include a direct URL.
4 more sources and references are available to members.
Related visionaries
Dandridge, Dorothy Jean
1922-1965
First African American nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, for 1954's 'Carmen Jones'; Hollywood's first full-fledged Black movie star
Washington, Denzel
1954-
First Black actor to win Academy Awards in both lead and supporting acting categories
Goldberg, Whoopi
1955-
Second Black performer, and second Black woman, to win an Academy Award, for 'Ghost' in 1991, fifty years after Hattie McDaniel's win
Davis, Viola
1965-
Award-winning actress and producer who became the first Black performer to achieve the 'Triple Crown of Acting' (competitive Oscar, Emmy, and Tony) and the first African American woman to win the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series; later an EGOT winner.