Halle Berry is having a very good year.

        Her performance as an emotionally ravaged woman in Monster's Ball, opening here Friday, won an Academy Award nomination Tuesday. That came on top of nominations from the Screen Actors Guild, American Film Institute, Chicago Critics Association, Golden Globes and Golden Satellites, and a best-actress prize from the National Board of Review.

        Yet, the role did not come easily to the 33-year-old Cleveland native.

        When she read the script, she said, she called her agent to tell him, “I really want to do this. I don't care where, why, how much they're paying. Just say yes. I really love this character.”

        His answer: “There's a small problem. Nobody really wants you for this (role).”

        When Ms. Berry's name was mentioned to director Marc Forster, she said, his instant response was “No, no, no. She's all wrong.”

        Said Ms. Berry, “He just had in his mind a vision of someone else. . . . I just think he thought my public persona, what he knew about me, was a bit too fragile. He didn't see me as this tough woman with all these issues.”

        “Your public image can override your abilities as an actor,” she said, citing her Monster's Ball co-star Billy Bob Thornton.

        “So many people say, "He's just the weirdest guy, isn't he?' And I say, "You've bought into the media perception of him. He's the coolest, nicest, most interesting guy I think I've met in a long time.' ”

        Ms. Berry's resume includes several memorable turns in intensely dramatic roles, including Jungle Fever, Losing Isaiah and the cable movie Introducing Dorothy Dandridge.

        “I like the roles better when I've been able to really stretch,” she said. “I love those tortured souls. I see myself in them, and then they're so far from me that they're a challenge for me to bring them to life.”

        To prepare for Monster's Ball, in which she plays the wife of a condemned prisoner, she met with women with husbands on death row.

        “That right away lent itself to the complexity that you can love someone so much, but hate them and hate going to see them and hate bringing the children,” she said.

        “When I'm really angry I have a tendency to internalize a lot of my grief and my pain. This character, she was a fighter. She lashed out, even at her kid. I don't really deal with my pain that way.”

        The movie hits racial hot buttons that most movies avoid, much to the frustration of minority actors and filmmakers. Ms. Berry admitted that her experience has been different from the many African-American artists who are unhappy with the industry's limited success at expanding diversity.

        “I've been able to work and make a living for the past 12 years,” she said. “So, am I unhappy? No. Frustrated at times, yeah. Do I wish things were a little different? Sure. But at the same time, I've seen the change in my 12-year career.”

        Given the chance, she said, “I definitely would make things more culturally diverse.

        “I'm from an interracial marriage so I've always known that all this hoopla about black and white, it's all so silly. It's been silly to me my entire life. To me, I know there is no difference, people are people. I would make more movies where people could just be people regardless of what color they are.”

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