Halle Berry: “The hardest thing to achieve is simplicity”

After ten minutes, it seems to me that we have always known each other. That there were no appointments through her agent, no security post at the entrance to her house, no paparazzi at the fence. Nothing. Only an old acquaintance who laughed at my respectful “Miss Berry” and gently corrected “Just Hallie.”

“Just Hallie” is sitting on a light-colored sofa in a light-colored room with a light-colored floor, cream-colored walls, and some lack of furniture – she is, she says, a fierce fighter for free space, for air. There is really a lot of air here – as well as light. All this is necessary for the growth of indoor plants and … two-year-old Nala – this is what the hostess thinks. “It’s funny, I guess, but I really think that for a full-fledged growth, a daughter needs a lot of free space, light and air. Do not think, I have no illusions that she produces chlorophyll! Hallie laughs. And I don’t water it. But you need to grow with a sense of freedom, the openness of the world for you. And this state – that the world is open – should accompany you even at home, even within four walls.

She herself grew up in different circumstances, but the result is impressive: the mistress of a bright house with a minimum of furniture seems to be the most free person I know in communication. She candidly answers questions and sometimes even those that I’m just trying to voice – as if she feels that this is what I want to ask. And sometimes she asks me questions – about whether I was engaged in cybersex, otherwise she recently went to one such site and became interested. About chats and blogs. About my son. She is open even to a person who appeared in her life 15 minutes ago and it is still unknown what he will write about her. But she does not expect a catch. Probably because she herself never arranges dirty tricks. During the entire time of our conversation, it seems that she has not changed her position on the couch: Halle is the most open, calmness disposed to the interlocutor. What was difficult to expect from her – a woman who has experienced more than one drama, overcame more than one obstacle.

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• Vladimir Mirzoev: “Do you think everything is so simple? Yes, it’s simple. But not at all.”

Psychologies: You are one of those people who really know what the blows of fate are. And you probably already know how to answer them …

Halle Berry: I even know what just blows are …

Do you always speak so directly?

H.B.: And I’m not afraid of such questions. But I understand you: indeed, there is an abyss between a person who has endured physical violence and a person who has not experienced it. Yes, I’ve been beaten. Beating is a special psychological experience. I had this weakness to get involved with violent men. And I am still deaf in one ear due to injuries. The fact is that in early childhood I grew up in circumstances of domestic violence, my father was an alcoholic, he beat my mother and sister, I didn’t get it just because I didn’t resist, but ran away. It so happened that violence in the home is something that I recognized first of all, and, probably, it entered my psyche as something inescapable. As a result, in my youth, I chose men who, as it were, corresponded to the model that I know so well – on an unconscious, emotional level. On the other hand, in my environment after four years there was no man, that is, I grew up in general in the absence of a male image. In its place was a gap, an emptiness, a failure. It took some effort to realize this. For me, it is generally important to be aware, not to live reactively. I also realized the need for this, making a desperate and essentially reactive act …

Are you talking about a suicide attempt?

H.B.: Yes. I was really depressed after my first divorce. I had to sign that the more I love a person, the more difficult it is for me to be near him – more painful. You love and therefore you are afraid to hurt, cause irritation, inconvenience … I know, this is probably some kind of strange love … not knowing its own worth, or something … But it was like this: love became a trauma for me. And the relationship collapsed as a result. We parted. And I found only this way out of depression: I plugged the exhaust pipe in my car, closed it from the inside and started it. I was sitting in the car, and suddenly, as if behind the rear window, my mother appeared. My mother, who went through painful years of marriage, raised my sister and me alone, never complained, urged us to be strong and never give up. And she herself did everything she could to raise us, alone, away from her homeland – her mother was from Liverpool, and she came to America as an adult, and she had no one to expect help from. And now I’m just throwing it away – that’s what I thought … Then I read somewhere … in some Japanese writer … yes, Kenzaburo Oe … that there are two types of suicide. The first according to the scheme: I will kill myself because I am disgusted with myself. And second: I’m killing myself, and this is a cry for help. So my desire to kill myself was definitely a cry for help addressed to me, but only to another, strong and conscious part of me. Since then, I know for sure: to be aware is as important for me as to feel. I got out only because I realized the viciousness of my own view of myself. Some part of me needed drama. In my professional life, I thought positively and constructively about myself – that I want to be an actress, I want to achieve something, I want to earn money with this profession, but in my personal … I was full of fears and other negativity. And fear is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And the task was to change the circle of thoughts and desires like “I don’t want pain anymore, I don’t want to be deceived” to “I want to find an honest person.” Well, psychotherapy also helped: my mother, a nurse in a clinic for the mentally ill, advised me more than once about specialists. I prefer group classes – other people’s stories give you the opportunity to realize the scale of your own story, not to exaggerate its dramatic significance.

H.B.: Yes, and diabetes. I fell into a coma on the set and it turned out that I have what is called juvenile diabetes. I was 23. Now I believe that it was he who made me a healthy person, because he gave me the strength and firmness necessary for life. Without him, I wouldn’t have it. And then you start to take care of yourself: what and when you eat, how much you sleep, how much you weigh (in my case there was a danger of exhaustion, not obesity) – and thus, willy-nilly, think more about yourself, moreover constructively, not in self-digging mode.

That is your philosophy – to joy only through trials?

H.B.: I’m not talking about joy. I’m talking about experience. There is something negative that remains negative. My relationship with my sister, for example. Or rather, the absence of any relationship. We fought terribly as teenagers. They fought, sometimes to the point of bloodshed. Then I started to leave home often, then she left. Our relationship did not have time to survive this phase – teenage self-affirmation. We did not have time to make up, stop fighting, become sisters again, as in childhood. Now we are practically strangers. But experience still teaches me: the vital muscles are pumped up in overcoming. Yes after all and muscles are formed in effort!

But you don’t want the same path for your daughter?

H.B.: Of course I don’t! But no one can avoid something like this. She will have her trials, and I have no illusions about this.

But some of them can be avoided. At least relationships with the opposite sex can be less painful.

H.B.: No, this question is not for me. I do not know the answer. I am very relationship oriented, I need love in my life. But the more you love, the more vulnerable you are. In fact, I don’t see anything wrong with difficult relationships. We must breathe deeply, live life to the fullest, experience deep feelings. And as for “risk reduction”, I found one way: no papers, no signatures.

That is, an official marriage?

H.B.: Yes. This is not for me. We should be connected only by feelings, the need for each other. Attachment without any conditions and conventions. Oddly enough, I realized this when I had Nala. And my love for her and her for me. Unconditional love. Now I want unconditional love and in contacts with men. In my past relationships, I could say: I want to be with this person forever. Now I know: “always” is impossible. But sometimes even one night is forever: it depends on the depth of the feeling. Physical time and experience time are two different things.

From this position, is it easier for you to build relationships with men?

H.B.: I don’t know… You see, I always want something simple, direct, clear. I love no-frills clothes, no-nonsense relationships. I love my friends, whom I met about 30 years ago: they know what I really am, I don’t need to “look” with them. Recently, one of them joked about me: “You want to sleep exclusively with the one you are in love with. It is, after all, primitive!” But I’m really romantic and I want to sleep with the one I’m in love with. I love love. But this is the most difficult thing – simplicity, directness, transparency. When I released my first perfume and worked with the perfumer, the greatest “nose”, I told him: I want the fragrance to be simple – only mimosa and figs. And that’s it! It turned out that there are only two components – this does not happen, it is impossible. There should be others, each in its own function: fixing, responsible for the plume, protecting from oxidation. And others … Simplicity is the most difficult thing to achieve. And so in everything.

And in sex? Doesn’t the feeling that “forever” is impossible simplify something in such a relationship?

H.B.: Here, for me, there was never a line to cross. For me, sex is just a language in which they speak about their love. Well, just as traffic signs express the rules of this movement, so certain feelings are expressed by sex. Only language. I speak it about how I love. And that’s all. And therefore I do not share the cult of orgasm that has engulfed the female part of our civilization at all. As if achieving it is some kind of revenge, a triumph over a man, his subjugation. As if if an orgasm is not achieved, the man must be blamed: he is an egoist. There is the joy of sex – that you are together, finally together with the one you want to be together with. And the presence or absence of an orgasm here is a secondary thing for me. Absence does not negate the joys of sex. In general, this idea that the female orgasm is a man’s business makes me laugh. I’m not talking about the fact that you can not trust another important things for you – an orgasm among them. This is something you need to do yourself. In my youth, I also expected that a man would give me strong sensations, but now I myself control what I feel. And I invite partners to participate, nothing more. Now I know myself, I know what I like, and I myself initiate what I need. And now we are talking about intensity, not about frequency.

Do these beliefs come with age?

H.B.: Perhaps. By the age of forty, you begin to understand that your happiness depends mainly on you. And I stopped looking for him all the time. On the contrary, I saw: it is everywhere and has the property of constancy. It’s in a strange momentary green ray at sunset – we have amazing sunsets over the ocean in Los Angeles. And the first time your child saw an elephant at the zoo. And in a funny dress from an obscure Dutch designer who carved pockets from T-shirt necklines. And the way you scratch yourself all night after a day at our domestic violence center… Happiness is in that too. It’s so obvious!