“I was sure I could cope with that”: After Nearly Losing an Eye, Halle Berry Did a Risky Stunt With Pierce Brosnan That Proved Too Much for John Wick Star
Halle Berry is regarded as one of the most adaptable actors in the business. She rose to prominence in the 2000s as one of the highest-paid actors and made history by becoming the first African-American woman and person of color to win the Academy Award for Best Actress for her work in Monster’s Ball.
In the James Bond movie Die Another Day from 2002, which starred Pierce Brosnan, the actress played the Bond girl. It was the fourth and final James Bond film starring Pierce Brosnan, and it was released on the 40th anniversary of the James Bond film series. Despite mixed reviews, the film was nonetheless the highest-grossing James Bond film at the time. Pierce Brosnan, according to Halle Berry, became a real-life Bond and saved her life. Let’s find out more.
Halle Berry recounts challenges while filming Die Another Day
Halle Berry appeared as Bond Girl Jinx in Die Another Day alongside Pierce Brosnan and, according to Slash Film, the actress had a tough time filming her entry scene, which was her emerging from the ocean, but it was challenging as the weather was really bad at the time in Spain. It was said by producer Michael Wilson that it was one of the worst series of storms on record.
The 2002 report by the Telegraph suggested that a piece of debris from a smoke grenade had flown into the actress’ left eye for which she had to go through a 30-minute operation to have it removed. The actress recalled one challenging scene.
She explained;
“Pierce and I had to run alongside a moving plane before hauling ourselves up into the wheel bay. It was only going about 15 miles an hour and I was sure I could cope with that. But you don’t realize how fast that is when you’re trying to catch a moving plane. By the fourth or fifth take, I was exhausted. Pierce did it effortlessly, but even though my legs were running, I was going nowhere.”
The actress said the director said to her at the time that this is what she wanted, this is what she had signed up for, to which Berry said to him that she did and she loved it.
Also read: “I quit at that point”: X-Men Director Quits the Superhero Franchise Because of Halle Berry
Halle Berry shares how Pierce Brosnan saved her life
In an interview on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon: At Home Edition, ahead of the release of Halle Berry’s Bruised, she was asked about the stunts she had done and was embarrassed about what she said,
“Not an action scene, but one time I was doing a scene with Pierce Brosnan in Die Another Day, and… I was supposed to be all sexy and like trying to seduce him with a fig and then I end up choking on it. James Bond knows how to Heimlich. He was there for me. He will always be one of my favorite people in the whole world.”
When the movie completed 20 years recently, the actress took to her Twitter to share a video clip for the movie and wrote, “It has been 20 years, Pierce Brosnan, forever my BOND!” The actor also appeared on The Tonight Show and they discussed the choking story to which Brosnan said,
“I vaguely remember it. I’ve seen a few quotes in the press recently. Yeah, we were on the set. I’m not quite sure what I did. I might have Heimliched her. I’m not sure. I just patted her on the back.”
The actress remembers.
Halle Berry was tricked into acting in X-Men
The movie’s director, Matthew Vaughn, directed X-Men: First Class in which Berry had not signed up despite Hugh Jackman and other actors coming back, so the director went into one of the executives’ offices and saw a new script for X3 which he said was notably fatter.
Vaughn when asked the executive head about the script, told him not to worry about it but he insisted and rifled through it and noticed that there was an entire scene about her character. He explained, “‘[I went,] ‘What is this?’ [They said,] ‘Oh, it’s Halle Berry’s script. I went, ‘OK because she hasn’t signed up yet.’ ‘But this is what she wants it to be, and once she signs up, we’ll throw it in the bin.'”
The director dropped out of the X-Men movie, stating “I thought, if you’re going to do that to an Oscar-winning actress who plays Storm, I quit. I thought, I’m mincemeat,” and went ahead to direct Stardust and Berry signed up to reprise the role of Storm in the 2006 movie and that scene, was described in the fake script did not make it to the final cut.
