It was one of those freak moments 
Halle Berry got her big break in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever (1991), but subsequently struggled to land leading roles in mainstream Hollywood fare. For years she teetered on the verge of stardom, from Boomerang to Bulworth, but it wasn't until Marc Foster cast her in Monster's Ball that Berry hit the big-time. She was the first African-American woman to win the Best Actress Oscar, in 2002, and since then has become an unlikely action star. She kicks butt as Storm in the X-Men franchise, has scored a spin-off movie after her stint as a Bond girl in Die Another Day, and bares her claws in the upcoming Catwoman movie. Supernatural horror Gothika marks a low-key stop-off for the former beauty queen until Catwoman opens in August.
How do you describe Gothika?
It's a suspense thriller with a supernatural twist. That's what I like to call it. I play a psychiatrist at a mental institution for the criminally insane. One day she wakes up - in her mind she believes the very next day - and she's now a patient in her very own hospital. She has no idea what she did, or how she got there.
Being locked up for something you didn't do is everyone's worst nightmare, isn't it?
Yeah. I love to go to dark places. I love the challenge of it.
So is the horror just psychological, or is there some physical stuff too?
Well, it's a little bit of both. The story centres around the murder of this woman's husband, and here she is, locked up in her own hospital. She starts to piece things together - if she in fact did it or if she's being framed. There's one point where she thinks maybe she dreamt it, maybe none of it's real. There's a point where she remembers she did it and thinks she did it. So it's a whole load of supernatural twists.
Your arm was broken in a scene with Robert Downey Jr. What happened, and how did you cope with the rest of filming?
Yeah, he broke my arm. We were doing a pretty emotional scene where my character is freaking out because she's locked up, and he comes in to try and sedate me and grabs my arm in just the exact wrong way. We all heard it pop. It was one of those freak moments. He knew it was broken as soon as he did it, and I knew it was broken as soon as he did it. I stopped for a month while it initially recovered, then I did another month with a full cast on. No body doubles. I did some really interesting shots, so either people will think I am doing something interesting or people will be thinking, "What the heck is she doing?"
Gothika is released in UK cinemas on Friday 2nd April 2004.
