Marc Forster, director of Monster’s Ball said of Halle Berry when he was at last persuaded to cast her as Leticia, “I saw an incredible sadness in her eyes from the past. I thought I could tap into that.”

Halle, who was seized by emotion when she became the first black woman ever to win an Oscar for Best Actress, has the kind of past that makes her achievements appear all the more stunning. Born to Judith, a white psychiatric nurse from Liverpool, and Jerome, an Afro-American hospital attendant who deserted their Cleveland, Ohio home when she was only four, Halle began life off-kilter, absorbing harrowing events that have haunted her ever since. Talking about her Oscar-winning role as Leticia she says, “I felt so fresh and clean at the end of this movie, like I got to release some of the demons inside of me that sometimes in life you have to carry around.” Her view of men, she believes, has been tainted by her violent alcoholic father’s behaviour. “I equated that kind of behaviour with love,” she explains.

To read more about how Halle has triumphed in life after being almost deafened by an ex-lover's beating, insulted for her colour and abused and abandoned by her father, see this week's issue of HELLO, on sale now.