Halle Berry and Susanne Bier Interview

11 January 2008

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What do you feel, are you happy with the project?

Halle Berry:I'm really happy, I'm really proud of it. Really proud of the movie and to have worked with the people that I got to work with in Susanna and Benicio and David and, you read something on paper and you don't know how it's gonna turn out. It's such a director's medium. And now I'm just really happy when I saw the movie that Susanna made it even better than I think I could've even imagined it to be. She's a wonderful storyteller.

Did you do much research into your character?

HB: Yeah.

..have an understanding of addiction

HB:Well, no I didn't and, and I think the beauty of this character, well she didn’t understand addiction. And that's why she never understood why her husband was so invested in this in her mind, this looser of a man who used to be this great lawyer who squandered his life away. She couldn't understand the connection because she was trying to understand it intellectually and she didn't really understand it emotionally, until she got to know the guy. And then she really understood the connection between she, I mean he and her husband. So, she didn’t understand addiction, so I did none of that. I left that to Benicio. My journey was to try to understand the psyche of a woman who had just lost the most important thing in her life, person of her life. She just lost it tragically and to understand the stages of grief and to understand what being a mother was in the face of this kind of

tragedy and to find the hope on this other side. That was my under the surface work.

How did you do that? Did you go to any grief counseling meetings?

HB: No,but you know what I realized? I had many people in my life who had lost their parents or their loved ones or their children but I never really, and this is gonna sound maybe a little crass, but I've never really bothered to investigate fully what they went through and what they felt.

My job was usually just as a friend to be supportive and cheer them up and to make them feel better, not to sort of, be a therapist and sort of pick their brain. So, what I now had a chance to do was to pick their brain about their loss. What did you feel like and what are the stages of grief? And then I had to take that information and interpret it in my own way and then funnel it through this character of Audrey.

And her way was very different than any of my friends described but their information gave me sort of a basis of what, you know dealing with loss and grief was all about.

Tell us about working with Benicio.

Ah, that was great. (laugh) He's very fun, that's true? Susanne Bier: He's extremely funny. HH: Yeah. SB: He infuses any set with a weird sense of absurdity, which makes him hilarious. He's incredibly funny at the most unexpected points. (laugh)

How, which points?

SB: Because I do, I think he perceive, I mean I can't I'm not within his head but I think he perceives the world in a very surreal manner. I think he has a kind of, a way of being in the world in a sort of, he's slightly different from the rest of us. And that, he has that tremendous sense of showing that sort of how surreal, how crazy, how odd is this moment? He does it all the time and...

Susanne, how did Halle convince you that she could play this part?

SB: Oh, that was very hard, no (laugh) I mean, I was interested, and I heard from the studio that she was fairly keen to have that part. I also heard there were a number of actresses being very keen for that part. I can say that...

HB:I heard that too.

SB: And, so I was kind of, I was kind of seriously, and I was kind of seriously, kind of thinking about who I thought it should be.

And I was in a strange way very curious about Halle and we arranged to meet. And Halle came in and it took me probably about 4 seconds to decide that this was gonna be good. And then we had a very good meeting.

HB: We did.

SB: Yeah. And we also did address sort of, or rather I told Halle I'm not gonna deal with you being a woman of color, however way you put that. It's not of interest and it’s not relevant to, in any sort of way address this in this movie. So, let's just talk about the part.

HB: But the other thing she did say, she goes in our like the first 10 minutes of that meeting, how do you feel about having absolutely no make up on and being on camera? (laugh) I said great love it. Well, because that's a requirement, no make up no, no make up at all. I said, okay.

SB: And also you know I thought when do you work out or we had, I was actually pretty, horrible now that I'm thinking about it. I said I don't want you working out.

HB: No more working out.

SB: I don't want you working out and I don't want like over worked out arms being, you, you know like you're a normal human being. Like, one thing is that you are out of this world beautiful on your own. That's one thing but, this sort of rest of it we can't have.

HB: Yeah and she told me straight up, this is what it's got to be. I said, okay. (laugh) Okay, okay.

The whole movie?

HB: No, there was a part in the beginning, SB: Very little. HB: In the beginning of life when she was with David, you know she wore a little bit of make up and at the end when she was starting, but the whole rest of the movie when she was in the grief and in all that, no. There was no.

How did you handle it, I mean I cried watching it, I mean it must've been...

HB: To wear no make up, you cried watching it (laugh) Oh God.

To deal with the loss?

HB: You know that was sort of like a delicate tight rope dance and I did everyday with Susanna trying to find the balance and trying to really find those little moments and hit them just right and really bring truth to the grieving process and not make it overly sentimental and really not be afraid to deal with the anger of it and the resentment of it all and, the bitterness of it. To not be afraid to really express that even when it came to dealing with my children. Because when you, when you really suffering through loss, you aren’t always the ideal parent but it doesn't mean you don't love your children and you don't want what's best for them but people are human beings and you aren't always your best self, especially when you’re dealing with something as tragic as this.

So, it was finding the confidence to really go to those dark places and knowing that it would be okay. Because it's about bringing the truth to this.

SB: And also, and also I want to say Halle is, is totally, unconditionally honest. I really would say that and, and, and, and, and that makes it possible to do those scenes because you don't feel like I think one of the, one of the misunderstandings about that you have to defend a certain you have to defend a certain part. You don't defend a human being, you become a human being and therefore you behave accordingly.

And if you do that truthfully and, and sensitively, which Halle does it all the time, then, then the defense is, is within, within the part.

Like with Audrey, you feel she's harsh, you feel she's harsh with her kids but most of all you feel she's very harsh with herself. And therefore, you forgive her for, for all the, the harshness to the world because it's so obvious that she's just desperately trying to protect them, trying to survive.

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