Halle Berry has finally cleared up long-held rumors that she and Billy Bob Thornton were “really doing it” during that explicit Monster’s Ball sex scene.
“We had this very explicit love scene,” Berry said during an appearance on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast Monday. “There’s an urban legend that we really were f---ing—I’ve heard it and it’s just not true.”
Berry’s work on the film would earn her her first Oscar for Best Actress, and the first Oscar in that category ever for a Black woman. She explained in the interview her annoyance that some viewers can’t just accept that she has great acting chops, opting instead to assume that the scene just “had to be real.”
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Internet discourse around the scene has continued to perpetuate the narrative, with some saying Berry once “admitted” the scene was real (she has not) and others claiming they know someone who knows someone who knows firsthand that the two actors really did the deed to make the scene.
Berry addressed how rumors like these swirl more persistently around her as an actress of color than others, in an interview with The Guardian timed around her Oscar win in 2002. “A lot of things happen to people of color that don’t happen to other people,” she said then, “But for me to really talk about that now is coming from a negative space, the space of a victim. What other people think has become very insignificant to me.”
But Berry admits now that this particular rumor had indeed gotten her skin. “It’s secretly driven me mad all these years,” she said on Armchair Expert. “You can’t just be a good actor and you can’t just make that sh-- look real.”
She also pointed out that Thornton was married to Angelina Jolie at the time, and as a “girl’s girl,” having sex with someone’s husband would be a no-go in any context. “He had a wife, so—all respect,” Berry said, as the hosts joked that Jolie would have had to “sign off” on that. “I know Angie and she ain’t signing off on that sh--,” Berry retorted playfully.
Thornton, for his part, hasn’t been able to escape being asked about the rumor either. In 2012, a full 10 years after the film’s release, he was asked to “dispel the myth” that he and Berry “actually had intercourse” during the scene on Sway In The Morning. “No, we’re actors,” Thornton responded. “We do the job that we’re required to do, and we were both very professional about it. It’s not like you can’t dream though,” he said, adding, “Halle’s a great talent and a beautiful woman.”
Berry also took the opportunity Monday to dispel rumors that she dated other famous men she’d worked with. “I didn’t date Spike Lee or Eddie Murphy,” she said. “Those are rumors too,” that the actress said have made her feel “violated” as a woman. She referenced pro wrestler Ric Flair’s false claim that she’d had sex with him in 1997, as she opined that her successes never quell the public’s desire to manufacture stories about her sex life.
“They gotta link you to somebody,” she said. “I’ve been married enough times,” she said of her marriages to David Justice, Eric Benét, and Olivier Martinez. “You don’t need to add on other things to me that have not happened. Just pick from the ones that are there.”
