Halle Berry has been professionally acting for over 30 years, with some of her notable early projects including Jungle Fever, Boomerang and a six-episode stint on Knots Landing. You certainly won’t have any trouble finding a lack of great Halle Berry movies to watch. However, at the start of her career, Berry was told by her manager she’d never work in Hollywood after she chopped off her hair. Fortunately for the actress, things went in a different, more lucrative direction.
As one of the 25 actors chosen to be part of British Vogue’s 2022 Hollywood Portfolio, Halle Berry, who recently starred in and helmed the Netflix movie Bruised as her directorial debut, was asked about her first ever audition. She recalled:
It was for a television show called Living Dolls. I decided to cut all of my hair off because all the girls that I saw had long, curly hair. My manager told me that I’d never work again. I booked the job.
From Halle Berry’s perspective, cutting off her hair was a good way for her to visually stand out from the other actresses who were auditioning, but her manager didn’t see it that way. They went so far as to declare that her acting days were over, but that ended up not being the case. Berry scored the role of Emily Franklin in the ABC series Living Dolls, which also starred future King of Queens actress Leah Remini and Michael Learned from The Waltons.
Living Dolls only lasted 12 episodes, but contrary to what Halle Berry’s manager said, her acting career wasn’t over by a long shot. In addition to the projects mentioned earlier, the ‘90s also saw Berry appearing in movies like The Flinstones and Bulworth. By the early 2000s, Berry’s fame skyrocketed thanks to the likes of X-Men, Monster’s Ball and Die Another Day among others. Oh yeah, there was also Catwoman in 2004, but if Berry had her way, she’d redo that critically-maligned superhero movie by directing it herself.
In any case, Halle Berry’s time being an actress was not torpedoed simply because she decided to drastically change her hairstyle. If anything, it’s possible that had she stuck with her previous look, she might not have been cast in Living Dolls, thus producing a domino effect where she wouldn’t be as famous as she is now, if not have left the acting business long ago. Fortunately for Berry’s fans, they don’t live in that hypothetical reality and can still look forward to seeing her pop up in movies and TV shows, with many of her roles being pretty badass.
Speaking of which, along with Bruised, the last several years have also seen Halle Berry appear in Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Kings and John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (the latter of which saw her playing the assassin Sofia, who could lead her own spinoff). Berry currently stars in Moonfall as Jo Fowler, a character who was initially written to be a man, and her next movie will be Netflix’s The Mothership, which doesn’t have a release date yet.