Berry’s Oscar Honors the Actress, Not the Character She Played

Angela Bassett doesn’t need to feel she missed her chance at an Oscar when she turned down Halle Berry’s role in “Monster’s Ball” (“Dust-Up Over an Oscar Role,” by Greg Braxton and Anne Valdespino, July 1). Her obvious reverse racism and misplaced feminism would have made it impossible for her to portray the heroic character that Halle revealed herself and the character Leticia to be.

JOHN A. SAYLOR

Long Beach

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Angela Bassett states: “I would love to have an Oscar. But it has to be for something I can sleep with at night.”

The academy doesn’t get it right every time, but if actors waited for roles that fit Bassett’s criteria, we’d have far fewer of the most memorable Academy Award-winning performances of recent years from black or white performers: Denzel Washington playing a corrupt, murderous cop in “Training Day,” Nicolas Cage as a self-destructive drunk in “Leaving Las Vegas,” Anthony Hopkins as a gleeful serial killer in “Silence of the Lambs,” Kathy Bates as a homicidal fanatic in “Misery,” Jeremy Irons as a conniving murderer in “Reversal of Fortune,” Jane Fonda as a prostitute in “Klute,” Robert De Niro playing an unredeemable lout in “Raging Bull.”

These actors have every right to be proud of their Academy Award-winning performances, but none of them put characters out there “to be proud of in 10 years.” And none of the above could use their characters’ actions to induce peaceful sleep at night.

For Bassett to criticize Halle Berry’s choice of roles based on some elusive higher standard because she is a black actress smacks of sour grapes, a lack of awareness or maybe nothing more than prejudice.

NICK PACCIONE

Long Beach

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Halle Berry was awarded best actress, but it seems as if everybody is renaming her award best African American actress, and this is wrong.

At the heart of this debate, the people who suffer the most are black actors. It’s 2002! Black actors should not have to carry the burden of the African American struggle every time they audition for a role. Berry should be applauded for her decision to take the role regardless of the sexual, racial or political implications.

DOUG CAMPBELL

West Hills

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Would the critics of Halle Berry’s role of Leticia in “Monster’s Ball” have been happier had the character committed suicide rather than release her emotions sexually? Did these critics notice that Leticia had lost her husband and her job? That she was being evicted from her home and that her wreck of a car stopped running, ultimately resulting in the death of her only child?

Have the critics seen the movie? Are they viewing it as pornography rather than the desperate act of a woman looking for something that would make her feel good again? Did these same critics miss the divine connections (her husband and both their sons) taking place to bring these two lost souls together?

DORISSE JONES

Chino Hills

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Once again, a major media outlet misses the boat--and the point--on the continuing Halle Berry story involving her Academy Award win for “Monster’s Ball.” This piece purports to document the alleged “reignited ... fierce debate inside and outside the African American entertainment community about Berry and the bittersweet significance of her victory.”

But Berry is half-white, is she not? Her Caucasian mother was in attendance at the Oscar ceremony, was she not? Didn’t see her black father anywhere, however. Hmmm.

So she is as much white as she is black ... er, I mean, African American (Forgot my Political Correctness Handbook of Nonsense there for a moment. Sorry.), yet you and other print and TV media continually refer to her as either “black” or “African American.”

I realize blacks in America are hungry to have their own race appropriately acknowledged for works of excellence in the high-profile world of celebrity worship in this country. But to lavish this kind of praise and adoration on Berry--who, make no mistake, is a fine actress and a gorgeous dame--as an “African American” actress is not only inaccurate but also inappropriate and dead wrong.

DENNIS HALL

Cypress