In next weekend’s thriller “The Call,” Halle Berry plays a 911 operator who fights to rescue a young woman from a vicious abductor.
As it turns out, the Oscar winner revealed to CNN that she had to make an emergency call herself during a terrifying home invasion.
“I did have to call 911 about a year before I made this movie,” Berry said. “I had someone who was attempting to break into my house and when I called I told the 911 operator, ‘I think they’re in my house.’ And from the time I thought they were in I couldn’t stop talking; the operator said to me,
‘Ma’am, if they’re in your house, you must be quiet. Stop talking.’ And I could not stop.”
Although the operator kept telling the actress she needed to be quiet, Berry said she just couldn’t do it.
But lesson learned: “Next time, if I ever have to call, I know the importance of being quiet and listening to someone.”
On a lighter note, Berry’s less-than-glamorous hairstyle in the film is getting an amused reaction from some quarters. The 46-year-old, who had a hand in selecting it, explains why she picked something so completely different from her own famous ‘do.
“With social media today, and with paparazzi that follow you to the market [and] to school with your kid, people see you, like, all the time,” she said.
“So it’s becoming harder and harder for actors to escape who they really are and have people suspend belief. . . . So for me, the first thing that has to go is [my] hair. That’s become synonymous with who I am. So it was just about finding a hairstyle that kind of made sense.”
The character isn’t the kind of woman who puts a lot of time into her style, and she didn’t seem like the type to have long hair, either.
“We tried that, that didn’t feel right,” the actress said of testing out longer locks. “We modeled it after somebody we saw in one of the centers. Kind of stole it, you know. But the hair’s been an issue, people have brought it up–every single person has brought it up.”
Douglas Hyde | CNN
