Can you talk about Benicio?

Oh, I’m sorry. Well, Benicio was great. He’s somebody that I always wanted to work with and I remembering sitting at junkets and peoples saying who would you really love to work with? And I always would say Benicio Del Toro, Benicio Del Toro. And so I finally got a chance to do that and he is one of my generation. He’s one of the greatest and I got to work and watch and learn, and to play somebody who’s that good and that instinctually organic. It was really fun.

It’s a really powerful film that one, isn’t it? It sounds like a very ...

It’s very different from this movie on many levels. It’s a little small movie that deals with love and loss, and it’s very different in the sense that you know, this is sort of designed to be a crowd pleaser, who dunnit. You know, this is a slice of life movie, a little movie that will probably take the festival route this year.

Do you prefer doing those types of movies?

I prefer that I get to go in-between the genres you know, and I prefer that I get to do studio movies and then little movies. That’s what I ... if I had to do one or the other, I think I would be probably bored and probably unhappy.

What attracts people to secret love affairs?

I don’t know. I don’t have them. C’est la vie.

Do you wish you could?

Hell no.

The whole secret thing of the online flirting, the whole secret affair.

I have no idea. I haven’t done that either.

You’ve never really done anything online? You’ve never flirted online like that?

Have not done that.

So with who would you like to work now?

Ooh, ah, ah, I ... you know, I would probably ... I still want to work with Denzel Washington. I’ve been saying that now for years and I think that’s still a desire of mine. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m hoping that one day the right script will come along and Denzel and I will get to do something.

To follow-up a little on that, do you think it’s odd that you’ve not worked with a whole lot of African-American leading men in your films?

Hard to say.

Well, I mean you know, we were thinking about like since Boomerang, there hasn’t been that many.

Oh, that’s not true. I worked with Michael Ealy basically on Oprah’s movie. I worked with Gary Dourdan who is actually in this movie.

He’s hot. We saw that one, yeah.

There’s been some but I ... you know, I’m a girl that ... who wants to sort of mix it up in life, you know.

With Giovanni’s character, you had that certain aspect of his character is very vulnerable too in that whole unrequited love thing. Why do you think that men or even women for that matter keep that whole unrequited love thing with a person going on with someone else?

Now that I do know about.

Really?

And I think you know, we often seek validation for ourselves through other people and if you manage to sort of cross paths with someone who you think can give that to you, I think it becomes some more of an addiction and when they call it looking for love in all the wrong places, I think that becomes sort of something that we almost can’t deny ourselves of. It’s almost like going by a train wreck. You don’t want to look but you just have to. Something in you instinctually drives you to it. I think may be that’s the same here.

With this movie being as intricate as it was, how much leeway or did the director allow you to kind of go off script at stages or did you have to stick it because it’s more reliable as it twisted and turning so much?

We had to stick with it. I mean as you may have read in the press, Bruce likes to enter ... I mean to improv a little bit. So he did a little bit of that but for the most part, we kind of had to stick to the script. I mean everybody would come up with a line here or there. You know, just sometimes as an actor, you find that the way the writer wrote a line just doesn’t come out of your mouth right so we change it a lot but we don’t change the intention but we sometimes change how it comes out of our mouths. It’s very hard to write for people that you don’t know and sometimes words just flow differently and so we had delivery always to change the little words, always keeping the intention of the line and of the scene the same.

What are the challenges for you to try and find the right script, the right project and ... not to repeat yourself?

That’s the key, not to repeat myself and that’s tough because I don’t know what the right scripts are. I just try to be instinctual about it and when I read a script, if I feel like it’s something new, if it scares me to death I usually think okay, I haven’t done this. May be I should think about trying. You know, I just try to always work in different genres, never to become you know bored or never to get pigeonholed in a box you know, never being limited to only playing one kind of character.

Is there character you’re yearning to play?

Well, I’d really like to be in a romantic comedy and I do have one coming up called Nappily Ever After that the women in the room would totally... I’m going to shave my hair, shave my head bald for this movie.

Seriously?

I can’t wait. I’m going to be greasehead bald. I can’t wait.

When is that?

That could be at the end of the summer.

Is there a romantic leading man yet? Do you have a leading man?

We don’t know yet because we are just now ... the last version of the script just came in and it came out really good so ...

You’re producing it too, right?

Yeah.

I don’t know why you haven’t done more comedies before because you have a sense of humour.

Nobody in Hollywood thinks so though obviously. I have to find ... that’s another nut for me to crack because I have to convince them that I could do a comedy and I think you know, they don’t see it right now so Nappily I’m doing for myself and it’ll be a chance to sort of you know, show that side of.

Did you conceivably write a film though?

I’ve written a couple of screenplays.

What are they about?

One is a comedy because I’ve been realising that I need to write one for myself, because it may be the only way I get one, and I wrote that. One is a thriller and the other one is only half done, so I won’t ... that was like a little whacky movie about ... it’s just a character piece, a little ... it’s really a short that I was going to ...

Who do you play in Nappily Ever After exactly?

I play this woman Venus, who ... the movie, it’s all about a woman ... you know that relationship that women ... guys, just bear with me for one second ... the relationship that women have with their hair and how hair throughout history has defined us and how we’re in such bondage, you know and everything is if my hair’s not right then we’re not right. So my character, at the beginning of the movie, something is done to her and her hair starts to fall out and you know ... and so she decides one night after being drunk trying to deal with the fact that their hair is dragged up, she’s drunk and she decides to shave her hair completely bald and now she has to face you know, the next morning with no hair and how her whole life and everybody around her is now different and behaves differently because she was this beautiful goddess with this long hair and now she’s bald and how she’s different now, and she’s forced to look at what beauty really is and it comes from inside obviously, not from the outside but it’s a hard lesson for us to get and this movie will sort of expose that and help us sort of come to terms and may be every time we hear thunder, we won’t go like running for cover.

And does she go and get wigs, or does she just go with the you know?

She tries lots of funny things to deal with it, put it that way.

So you didn’t want to do the cap thing? You really wanted to just...

I’m really ready. I think I ... I want to get this lesson on film because I think I still struggle with this hair issue too, so I’m really going to ... I’m going to get the lesson on film. Hopefully other women will get it too.

What’s the best part about being Halle Berry right now?

The best part? The best part is I’m ... I’ve been saying I’m just really happy. I’m in a really good space in my life and I’m happy and I can honestly say it’s not because of anything, it’s not because you know I have a really cute boyfriend now, it’s not because my career is in a good ... it’s because I feel good about me and if anyone of those things should you know, dissipate, I’d still be happy, I’d still be okay and that feels like a really good place to finally have arrived to.

Did you have a lot of input on your wardrobe in this movie?

Yes, but we did have an amazing costume designer, Renee Kalfus but I needed the ... you know, on many movies for me, if I put on a certain piece of clothing then I feel like the character. You know, I remember in Monster’s Ball when I had those flip-flops on, I was Leticia Musgrove. I had to have the flip-flops. And so there’s always one or two things that hones it in for me and this movie, there was the clothes. Every character that I played within the one character had a piece of clothing that when I had it, I knew okay, now I’m this character so a big part.

Did you keep them?

I did keep the clothes, yeah. I can’t even wear them again but I have them.

Aren’t you about to shoot something with your Monster’s Ball co-star Billy Bob Thornton or did you shoot it or is it happening?

There’s a movie called Tulia about Tulia Texas and we’re talking with him. He might if there’s a schedule conflict possibly but if he can work it out, yeah we’ll be working together again.

You had a great chemistry with Bruce. Can you talk about that?

Well, it’s hard not to have chemistry with Bruce because he’s a ladies’ man but he’s also a man’s man. You know, men like him. He represents that you know good ‘ol macho man’s man and women find him irresistibly sexy, and he’s funny, he’s charming, he knows how to say all the right things that just make you feel like you’re the most important person on the planet. Like he’s got all that down. He knows how to do all of that. So it’s really ... it’s fun to be around Bruce.

Was there a different relationship that you had with Bruce then Giovanni?

Probably because of the nature of the characters that we all played and our connection to each other. You know, my relationship with Bruce was about seducing him so our banter in-between scenes was always very seductive and silly and sexy and you know, we just tried to stay in that mode where Giovanni and I, because he was like my guy Friday, you know we had a more cerebral conversations all the time and we talked about the computers a lot and you know, just different.

Did the star that you got yesterday, did that kind of almost to you re-legitimise who you are as an actress and your place in holiday today? What did it mean to you?

Yeah. You know, it was yet again another profound moment in my career. After Oscar, I wasn’t so sure I would ever have another one and I was surprised that I found myself standing up there on the verge of like tears again because I’m an emotional train wreck and I found myself up there really moved and really feeling proud and knowing that while it seemed like a simple star in the ground but it represented history and that I was a part of it, and the fact that my star is like right in the entrance of the Kodak Theatre said to me okay, I’ve got a piece of prime real estate here. It wasn’t a bad day. It’s a good day.

Have you got any charities or causes that you’re working with currently?

Yes, the Jenesse Centre. That’s my pet pead. That’s my cause that I care most about and it’s a home ... it’s a place that provides shelter for battered and abused women and children, and we’re in the process now of raising money to build what we call A Fake It Til You Make It centre where people in the community can go and get advice and get help, legal assistance and education and things that women need today to help empower themselves. So that’s really important what I’m doing now.