Halle's simply the best

Right now, Berry has everything to smile about. Not just following the hugely successful X-Men with a role in the film world's most-successful-ever franchise (the next Bond movie), or her happiness with new husband, singer Eric Benet. Or even the little Best Actress Oscar statue that she - the first black woman to do so - picked up for her part in Monster's Ball, the film we're here to talk about.

She is still smiling over winning the role of Leticia in the first place. 'It's a wonderful part,' says Berry. 'And getting it was almost as hard as winning the Oscar for it.'

Set in the Deep South, the film centres on the relationship between Berry's poverty-stricken single mother and Hank (played by Billy Bob Thornton), the prison corrections officer who, unbeknown to Leticia, executed her husband. 'It's difficult for women to find roles that carry a movie,' Berry explains. 'When a part like Leticia comes along, it's something that every actress in her right mind would absolutely fight for.'

And fight they did. Which left director Marc Forster with some very hard choices to make. Ironically, it was Berry's stunning looks which almost lost her the part. 'Every great black actress wanted the part,' says Forster. 'But because she is so beautiful and glamorous, Halle was the underdog. But she kept fighting for the part, and she was relentless.'

Determination is a characteristic that marks out the 33-year-old from Cleveland, Ohio. She had a tough childhood ? her mother Judy raising Halle on her own with little money. And while her looks helped her prosper on the beauty queen circuit (she was Miss Ohio in 1986), as an actress Berry has had to fight every stigma in the book - being beautiful, being black, being a model-turned-actress. Some of her emotion in that tearful Oscar night speech no doubt reflected the obstacles she feels she's overcome. 'My life has not been without strife,' she says. 'And I tried to draw on those when playing Leticia. But it was my father who gave me the starting point in understanding the character. He was an alcoholic who was very abusive. He had never been loved himself so he didn't know how to love us. There are shades of that in Leticia - she drinks too much and doesn't know how to love her son.'

The film is notable for one of the most incendiary sex scenes - between Berry and Thornton - in recent movie memory. When asked about it, Berry laughs. 'I forgot about all the thrusting until I saw it last night,' she says. 'I was thinking, "Wow, look at her." I never really connected to it as myself.'

Since her screen debut as a crack addict in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, too many of Berry's roles have been primarily decorative. The exceptions - such as Warren Beatty's streetwise lover in Bulworth and her award-winning portrayal of Dorothy Dandridge in the TV biopic - showed her to be a talented, risk-taking actress long before the Oscars.

But she refuses to dismiss her other films such as The Flintstones or Swordfish. 'It's important for me to be in big-budget Hollywood films, because it signifies that people of colour are making headway in the industry,' she says. 'Those movies are just as valuable to my career as good acting parts like Monster's Ball.'