How I live with being Halle

Standing on the Albert Hall red carpet this week, Halle Berry looked dazzling. Displaying her cheeky grin for the cameras at the premiere of Die Another Day, the 34-year-old is now one of the world's biggest stars. But to some, she looked like a passer-by, though stunningly well-dressed, who had wandered on to a film set. There was a certain reticence, and onstage, before the film began, there were those who thought she was outshone by both Madonna and co-star Rosamund Pike.

Critics, too, have already highlighted her uncomfortable portrayal of the supremely confident Jinx opposite Pierce Brosnan's Bond. Surprising though it may sound, Berry's attempts at such glamorous composure are merely a highly polished mask for the insecurity that has dogged her for most of her life.

'"I try to come across as confident, but I've always struggled to fit in," she admitted to me in a moment of candour. It was noon in a suitably plush Los Angeles hotel suite, days before Berry was due to jet off to Europe. Seemingly wearied by her endless round of interviews, I sense a woman seeking to come to terms with her sudden - and tenuous - grasp of fame.

"Whenever I feel that people don't like me, then I become whatever they want me to be, so they will."

She seems to be using her sudden fame to exorcise her demons - and she doesn't care who knows it. Acting, after all, is the ultimate profession for anyone focused on their ego. In Hollywood it's therapy, and for Berry it's merely a sensible progression from the psychiatric help that helped her through her teenage years.

'I've always sought help. I'm a big believer in psychotherapy. My mum had me in therapy when I was 10 because she felt it would help after my unconventional upbringing. That's where I think my need to be liked stemmed from.''

Her white Liverpudlian mother, Judith, met her black GI father, Jerome, when he was stationed in England. She moved to America to marry him and they settled in Cleveland, Ohio. Initially, Berry's parents lived in a black neighbourhood, where they had their two children, Halle, and her older sister Heidi. When Halle was four, her parents separated and her mother moved her daughters to a white part of town.

"When we lived in the black neighbourhood, we weren't liked because my mother was white. In the white neighbourhood, they didn't like me because I was black. That was the beginning of my trying to be what I thought people wanted me to be. If they wanted me to be the clown, I'd be the clown. If they wanted me to get straight As, I'd get straight As."

She did, too. The teenage Berry sounds not unlike Reese Witherspoon's irritating over-achiever Tracy Flick in Election. She was editor of the school paper, class president, and prom queen before embarking on a hugely successful run in American beauty pageants (in 1986 she was runnerup in the Miss USA competition). But happiness still eluded her.

"I was like a chameleon that was just spinning in circles. And that was my existence for well into my adult life. It's only since I've got into my thirties that I've really started to identify what I was doing. Mum has been a big help through all of this - she was a psychiatric nurse, so I've always used therapy as an outlet to form an objective opinion."

Though most people in the US have their therapist next to the baby-sitter on speed-dial, A-list celebrities usually want us to fantasise about their perfect lives, not their pert bottoms perching on a shrink's couch. But the more Berry spills, the better she feels. "Sometimes it's a painful process when you really have to take a look at who you are and what you have or haven't been doing. But this incredible fame trip is a real time of self-discovery for me, and it's very cathartic.

"I guess it really hit home when I won the Oscar this year for Monster's Ball - that gave me a certain confidence for the first time and it effected more of a change in me than all those years of therapy." Certainly, it was that film that truly launched Berry's career. Her portrayal of a black waitress whose son dies, and who then finds love in the arms of a white racist prison guard, was mesmerising.

She adds: "It wasn't necessarily the award, but daring to follow my heart and pursue a project that dealt with such gritty subject matter. So many people said, 'Don't do it, it could end your career - and you're getting no money.' And lots of people raised the subject of the graphic sex scene I had to do. But it all worked out, and after that any sex scene is easy!

"But I had such a fear of what people would think of me, and of being judged - especially here in America. That's why I hadn't done a sex scene before. But when I was able to identify that as my problem, I decided to rid myself of it. And what a great thing it's been, too. Very liberating.

"Those are the kind of things that have really given me a tougher skin now, and, more than anything, taking my own decisions has given me the strength to not always seek the approval of other people. If people don't like me it doesn't faze me any more, because I don't take myself so seriously. Obviously my husband has always supported me, but I don't care any more about the others, the ones who I really wanted to like me. I'm the one who has to look in the mirror and like myself. And that's really all that matters."

However, lack of selfesteem has also permeated her relationships with men and led to her becoming a victim of terrible abuse. In one early relationship, she was so badly beaten by a boyfriend that she reportedly lost 80 per cent of her hearing in one ear. Then, in 1993, she married American baseball star David Justice, though the marriage was short-lived and led to her contemplating suicide.

"I would meet guys and would just want them to like me, never wondering if I would like them," she laughs, sounding incredulous at her own stupidity. "I'd be so busy going 'like me, like me, like me', and then I'd wake up and say: 'Oh, you're such a jerk. Why have I been trying to make you like me? I don't even like you!' So it's a process. We grow and we learn and we mature. And I'm finally starting to get some of those tricky lessons that eluded me early in my life."

But has she found true love in the arms of singer Eric Benet, whom she married last year? She has reappeared in the tabloids of late, with speculation that he has been unfaithful and dallying with an old girlfriend. The tabloids have also run photos purporting to be Berry visiting her husband at a rehab clinic he attended for sexual addiction. She does admit to Benet also being in therapy, but that's as far as she will go.

"You reach a point where no matter what anyone writes, good or bad, it doesn't define you," she says. "I'm able now to look the other way. I've just reached the place where I really don't care what people think is going on in my marriage and my private life."

Sometimes, though, the stories are so invasive that she can't turn a blind eye. She and Benet recently sued one American magazine over a story which inferred Berry was sticking with the marriage only for the sake of her step-daughter India, whose mother was killed in a car accident when she was still a toddler.

Why did she sue? "Because it involved our daughter. [Berry says India started calling her "Mommy" the day she and Benet married, and constantly refers to her as "my daughter".] And I will always protect her. If that means suing someone when they falsely involve her in something, then I feel that as her parent, it's my responsibility to shield her from that kind of stuff. It also sends a message to the press that she's off-limits. Other than that, I really don't think I'd waste my time or my hard-earned money."

Reconnecting with her roots seems part of Berry's mission - though noticeably she did not meet her Liverpudlian relatives while filming Die Another Day in Britain. "There's a whole family-full up there and I just didn't have the time. That's my one regret. But I'm so happy that I got to spend more time in England and see some of the things my mother has always talked about."

Still, it is a tad peculiar, I venture, that with film sets full of friends and family, the Liverpudlian mob were nowhere to be seen. The only answer I get is another delectable smile. Sensing her unease, I shift the conversation to whether she has plans to start her own family. ''I'm 34 now, so it better start to be a good time. Yeah, I'm feeling like it will be a really good time."

Berry doesn't admit to being cured of her insecurities. Perhaps she feared that if she met her English white relatives they wouldn't like her. Perhaps she feared it would be an emotional reunion that would have left her feeling once again emotionally insecure. Confidence - or lack of it - is all with Berry, and playing the ultimate hard-nosed Bond girl, Jinx, is clearly another piece of the jigsaw. How many more pieces are still missing, we'll leave to her therapist.