Halle Berry: Being only black to win Oscar’s ‘Best Leading Actress’ since 2002 heartbreaking

Halle Berry, an American actress, says she is heartbroken no other black woman has won the ‘Best Leading Actress’ category at the Academy Awards better known as Oscars in 20 years.

Berry became the first black woman to scoop the much-coveted gong in 2002 following her heroics in ‘Monster’s Ball’, an American romantic drama film.

Since the Academy Awards debuted in 1929, about 92 whites have won the category.

Eight black stars have won ‘Best Supporting Actress’ over the years but none has emerged ‘Best Leading Actress’ since Berry achieved the feat — a development which continues to generate controversies over allegations of racial inequality.

In an interview with the Mirror, the 54-year-old movie star expressed sadness over the absence of diversity in the list of those who have been winning the category over the years.

“The heartbreak I have is because I really thought that night meant that very soon after that, other women of colour, black women, would stand beside me,” Berry, a Bond girl in the 2002 movie ‘Die Another Day’, said

“Now it’s been 20 years and no one has, and so every time Oscar time comes around, I get very reflective and I think, ‘Well maybe this year, maybe this year’.

“It has become heartbreaking that no one else has stood there.

“Arguably there could have been other women who deserve to have been there that haven’t been there and I would have hoped that in 20 years, there would have been others that would be beside me.

“That moment mattered because so many people have come up to me over the years and told me how that moment shifted their thinking about what they could achieve, what they aspire to do or what they believed they could do – that they were touched by that moment. That is the value that I know is real.”