Halle Berry recently chatted with Entertainment Weekly to celebrate Catwoman‘s 20th birthday and shared that she's never liked being the only one blamed for the movie's poor reception. The notorious comic book film bombed at the box office, and Berry won a Razzie for her acting. She famously showed up at the event with her Oscar in hand to accept the award for worst performance.
“I felt like it was Halle Berry's failure, but I didn't make it alone,” Berry told the publication. “All these years, I've absolutely carried it.”
“Catwoman” hit theaters on July 23, 2003, to bad reviews, with many critics agreeing it was one of the worst comic book movies ever. The film, directed by Pitof, starred Berry as Patience Phillips, a shy cosmetics company worker who dies and comes back as Catwoman. Berry was keen on doing the film because it was pitched as a total reimagining of the Catwoman character, but from the start she wasn't thrilled with the story, which has Catwoman looking into a deadly cosmetics beauty line.
“I always thought the idea of Catwoman saving women from a face cream felt a bit soft,” Berry said to Entertainment Weekly. “All the other superheroes save the world; they don't just save women from cracked faces. I always knew that was a soft superhero plight, but at that time in my career, I didn't have the agency I have today or belief that I could challenge that, so I went along with it.”
Berry said “things went smoothly [for me]” during filming and “it was a great shoot,” adding: “I had the time of my life. I worked my ass off to embody a cat in so many ways, psychologically and physically. I never thought it went awry; I just thought that maybe it wouldn't feel as big as other movies because the plot stakes aren't as high.”
The mood around Catwoman started to shift when a set photo leaked online showing Berry's costume, which comic book fans criticized for not being true to the character. The movie swapped out the character's iconic catsuit (made famous on screen by Michelle Pfeiffer in Tim Burton‘s Batman Returns) for a more revealing outfit.
“That was the first thing that started the negativity,” producer Denise Di Novi told EW. “It was an early shot before we'd perfected it. It was so different than what people were used to in the other movie. A catsuit, by definition, everything is covered up. We thought it'd be cool to be more rock & roll and bare. Halle was famous for wearing a bikini in her Bond movie, and we were like, why not? People had such a reaction to it, which is so ridiculous. We had the famous Colleen Atwood helping us with just that costume. Halle had a lot of input. I still think it's cool and a lot more modern!”
Berry added, “Fans were upset about the suit. It was something different, but in our minds, why keep remaking Catwoman if you're not going to take risks and bring something different to it? The beauty was that it was better suited for my version of her, my body, who I was, and my sensibilities.”
Catwoman didn't win over any fans when it finally opened in theaters. Critics piled on the film, with Variety writing in its own review: “Warner Bros. plummets to the dimmest recesses of popcorn inanity with Catwoman, which, even by the standards of comic book adaptations, requires a suspension of disbelief surely beyond most audiences.
“I didn't love [the backlash],” Berry told EW about the reaction. “Being a Black woman, I'm used to carrying negativity on my back, fighting, being a fish swimming upstream by myself. I'm used to defying stereotypes and making a way out of no way…It didn't derail me because I've fought as a Black woman my whole life. A little bad publicity about a movie? I didn't love it, but it wasn't going to stop my world or derail me from doing what I love to do.”
“I hated that it got all put on me, and I hate that, to this day, it's my failure,” Berry later added. “I know I can carry it. I still have a career 20 years later. It's just part of my story. That's okay, and I've carried other failures and successes. People have opinions, and sometimes they're louder than others. You just have to keep moving.”
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