When Halle Berry and her husband of just over two years, Olivier Martinez, announced last week that they were separating, gossip hounds wondered aloud if the actress, now apparently headed for divorce No. 3, was doomed in love and marriage. That kind of speculation tends to accompany famous women who are multiple divorcees, and Berry—aside from perhaps Jennifer Lopez—has had one of Hollywood’s most infamously tumultuous love lives of the past two decades.
In the wake of Berry’s divorce news, the Oscar-winner’s first husband, former MLB star David Justice, exploded in a Twitter rant blasting his former wife, accusing her of fueling rumors about him and destroying every man she’s been with.
“Reading the latest Halle Berry Reports, it wasn’t me who hit Halle causing the ear damage. Halle has never said that I hit her,” Justice initially tweeted, referencing Berry’s having revealed years ago that she was in an abusive relationship with a still-unnamed man. A minute later he added: “It was a former Hollywood boyfriend (WS) that she told me!”
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The unnamed “WS” accusation led to widespread speculation on social media. Justice wasn’t finished.
“When she first reported that she had been in abusive relationships, she wouldn’t name the ‘famous’ former boyfriend (WS)...”
“She was mad at me leaving the relationship so she and her Hollywood Team just tried to destroy my character. It had to be my fault, right?,” Justice tweeted, before complaining that Berry trashes her exes. “Yup...Me, Eric, Gabriel and Olivier were all her ‘Knight in Shining Armor,’ until it ends. Then we all become the worst guys in history.”
“Only the guys in the relationship with Halle know the real deal...there will be another, of course. He’ll be called ‘The Best’ until it ends,” Justice then added a “warning” to Martinez: “Just wait, Olivier...It’s coming! She insinuated that her daughter wasn’t safe around Gabriel...look it up and see the reason! Just wrong. Smh.”
A few hours later, Berry’s second ex-husband, R&B singer Eric Benet, chimed in to give Justice the Twitter equivalent of a fist-bump. “My man at @23davidjustice is tweeting some truth dis’ mornin’!” Benet tweeted.
Berry and Justice married in 1993 when she was fresh off her breakthrough turn in the Eddie Murphy comedy Boomerang, a spot on People’s infamous “50 Most Beautiful” list, and the rapidly rising “it” girl in Hollywood; and he was the All-Star left fielder and MVP contender for the Atlanta Braves. Their marriage lasted over three years before the couple divorced acrimoniously in 1997, with Berry filing a restraining order against Justice.
“She wasn’t the same person I was with before we got married,” Justice told People at the time. “I’ve never known a girl who could throw a tantrum like she does.”
Berry and Benet began dating in 1999, and married two years later. Things seemed idyllic, but they split in 2005. Berry divorced Benet after he’d reportedly admitted to being unfaithful, and in a 2006 interview with CanWest News Service, she made a crack about having to pay Benet alimony in the wake of his infidelities.
“Yeah, that’s not good,” Berry said at the time. “Especially when he cheats on you like 27 times.”
Benet responded in the New York Post shortly thereafter.
“If she said that, that I cheated on her 27 times, then she is simply lying. Straight out, that’s a lie and a gross, gross exaggeration of what happened in our marriage. I’ve admitted my indiscretion and apologized and took responsibility. I think maybe it’s time for Halle to take some responsibility, instead of constantly casting herself in this victim mode and implying her commitment to our marriage was without flaw.”
He went on to criticize Halle for not maintaining a rapport with his daughter from his previous relationship. “Halle used to insist she loved India, though she hasn’t seen her and has barely communicated with her in years, and not because I’ve stopped her. If she really had any feeling toward my girl, she’d realize how hurtful such statements are. Especially when they are untrue.” In that 2002 interview with Barbara Walters, Berry said that she felt she attracted the wrong men before addressing her past as an abuse victim.
“If there was a loser in any town—I used to find him!” she declared with a laugh. Walters then asked Berry about the actress’s earlier revelation that she’d lost part of her hearing after an abusive man she’d dated punched her in the ear.
“Was he famous?” Walters asked. When Halle just smiled, Walters responded with, “That means yes… I’d like to know who he was but you probably won’t tell me.”
“No.”
As the conversation continued, Berry did directly discuss her relationship with Justice. She revealed that she’d contemplated suicide after their marriage ended.
“Well, I think I was still using men, and my mate, to identify who I was. And when that was gone, I was nothing.” When Walters asked how she’d planned to kill herself, Berry told her succinctly: “I was going to sit in the car. I went into my garage with my two dogs and I had them in the car and I was going to asphyxiate myself.”
She again spoke about her failed marriage to Justice in 2008, stating that the union “started off with such promise” but “quickly, unraveled—probably for the better.” The star’s words weren’t at all bitter or spiteful toward her first husband. “It seemed to be a good idea at the time,” she told the Daily Telegraph. “But we soon found that we didn’t have much in common, and our work kept us apart for long periods—a major cause of strife. That was a moment in my life when my brain short-circuited and I just had to live with my mistake until I could escape from the marriage. It was a shame.”
She also spoke about Benet in that same interview.
“That break-up put me on a fine line between sanity and madness. I felt as if all my relationships were doomed because I was finding it so hard to find the right guy to spend the rest of my life with. I’m not very good at relationships—I think being without a caring father for the most important years of my life is the cause. I used to think it didn’t matter that I’d missed out on a relationship with my father. But, as I’ve aged, I’ve seen a pattern emerge.”
“Not having a strong male figure has affected the way I relate to men and it’s influenced what I think I deserve when it comes to a man,” she continued. “My mother had a lot of failed relationships and, on a subconscious level, that’s what I expect for myself. It’s probably something I’ll spend my life trying to undo.”
Benet and Justice appear to be having such a good time at Halle’s expense now, seemingly getting the last laugh or some kind of vindication from her and Martinez not being able to make things work. But for all of Justice’s claims that Halle hurt his reputation—and there is the matter of that restraining order that he seems to ignore in his recent outbursts—he concedes that she never claimed he hit her. And as he gloats over her latest heartache, which also involves her two young children, it’s worth noting that he was already throwing her under the proverbial bus back in the late ’90s as he accused her of unreasonable jealousy and “tantrums.” Most of her public reflections regarding their marriage seem to be more introspective than accusatory.
In the case of Benet, there were rampant rumors at the time that he’d been treated for sex addiction. He would later deny that he was a sex addict, but admitted that he’d made mistakes and all parties seem to concede that he was at the very least a cheater. It was his infidelities that supposedly sullied their marriage; it’s quite pompous for him to think he has the moral high ground to scoff at Halle as she endures another divorce.
There is something particularly distasteful about two grown men using social media to “bro up” while laughing and pointing at their mutual ex-wife’s current marital woes. Justice told The Daily Mail this week that he was hurt that Berry never tried to squelch rumors that he was the unnamed abuser mentioned in the Walters interview.
“I had to say something after reading about Halle’s recent marriage. So many years ago, I didn’t say anything about the accusations that I abused her, but now I have three children, ages, 15, 13 and 11, two boys and one girl, and they can read this stuff and they have friends who will read it as well so I had to finally come out and say once and for all I never hit Halle Berry.”
But Justice’s Twitter rant wasn’t just about clearing his name, and Benet deciding to cheerlead the childishness wasn’t about her trashing him. These guys’ behavior comes from knowing that the general public thinks something is “wrong” with Halle Berry because she’s beautiful, famous, and yet can’t stay married. Right now, the guy who basically called her a brat years ago and the guy who admittedly cheated get to tell everyone she was the problem. We’ve loved to pick apart these kinds of women for decades; and all of these men have had to cope with being Mr. Halle Berry at some point. There’s no better way for an insecure man to reclaim his id than to get a chance to publicly carve up an ex—all the better if she’s one of the world’s most desirable women.
Richard Pryor married seven times to five different women. Oscar-winning directors Martin Scorsese and James Cameron, as well as former heavyweight champ George Foreman, have been married five times. Sir Ben Kingsley and Frank Sinatra? Both tied the knot four times. Male serial divorcees don’t seem to be as scrutinized, their public personas not so defined by their failings as husbands. Pryor’s legend sometimes paints his dysfunctional marriages as part of his outlaw roguishness, and usually such marital wreckage is virtually ignored.
But it comes to define famous women.
Halle Berry and Olivier Martinez’s marriage may be ending for a number of reasons. But none of them have anything to do with David Justice or Eric Benet. They injected themselves into their ex-wife’s current pain because they know that right now, the scrutiny is on her. It’s sad that once-accomplished men can be so cowardly. But years after they’ve ceased being “Mr. Halle Berry,” she’s still a superstar. It’s not like either of these guys have generated much ink on their own lately.
Hell hath no fury like a weak man ignored?
