Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Halle Berry To Play a 1930s Jew

She’s been a Bond girl and a superhero, and now Halle Berry’s set for a very different type of role: “a Jewish woman in the 1930s,” the Oscar winner says in Tuesday’s New York Times.

Little else is known about the role, one of several Berry will play in “Cloud Atlas,” a big-budget drama about “characters in six eras who might share a soul migrating through time.” Berry’s co-stars will include Tom Hanks, and the directors include Tom Tykwer, the German filmmaker behind “Run Lola Run.”

The Shmooze hopes the movie will help the comeback efforts of Berry, who’s basically had an off-decade since winning an Oscar in 2002 for “Monster’s Ball.” We’re also curious about what sort of directorial advice Berry will receive for the Jewish part. In a separate article over the weekend, the Times revealed that non-Jewish actor Viggo Mortensen, currently starring as Sigmund Freud in “A Dangerous Method,” needed help in mastering the part.

“You’re not walking like a Jew,” director David Cronenberg recalled telling him. “[Mortensen] had this kind of rangy, athletic thing going on.”

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.