Actress Halle Berry recently spoke of the challenges of her Frankie & Alice role in the Blue-Ray/DVD release, which was released last week.
In the film, directed by Geoffery Sax (White Noise, Othello), Berry plays Frankie, a black go-go dancing woman with dissociative identity disorder caused by a repressed traumatic incident from her childhood. But her other alter-egos come into play: Genius, a seven-year-old child, and Alice, a Southern white racist woman.
“[This] was hard for me as a person and as an actor,” she said. “It was hard for me to accept and understand that a woman could exist inside of a person of color that was filled with so much hatred and had the ability to express it the way she did.”
Although the part intimidated her, Berry still wanted to do it.
“Whenever I am scared to death of something, then I know I am on the right track,” she said.
But the 48-year old also said that the role compared to her own struggles in Hollywood as a black actress.
“I relate to a woman’s will to survive and to win. I’ve had to operate from that place my whole life as a black woman in this industry,” she said. “I’ve had to persevere, I’ve had to find ways to reinvent myself, I’ve had to find ways to not feel victimized but to keep fighting, keep fighting.”
Based on a true story, Berry said that Frankie had to “keep believing she could overcome things.”
Berry was nominated and earned several awards for the film, including Best Actress by the African-American Film Critics Association and Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture by the NAACP Awards.
Despite Berry giving it her all, Frankie & Alice received several mixed reviews.
The Hollywood Reporter called it “a well-wrought psychological drama that delves into the dark side of one woman’s psyche” but, holding a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 21%, others weren’t so receptive.
I didn't like it "@yesIMgorJESS: Frankie & Alice is a great movie!"
— Dese Are Just Tweets (@B_Random89) August 25, 2014
Frankie & Alice also stars Stellan Skarsgård as Dr. Oz, Frankie’s psychiatrist.