Halle Berry has urged women not to get “bogged down” with the idea of having children by a certain age.
The 56-year-old actress, who has daughter Nahla Ariela Aubry, 15, with her ex Gabriel Aubry and son Maceo-Robert Martinez, nine, with ex-husband Olivier Martinez, warned that having children means women “give up a lot of your personal life to growing those other lives”.
Speaking to Women’s Health at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity panel, Halle said: “I’m solidly in my womanhood. I finally understand what I have to say is valuable, even if no one else agrees. Here’s what I tell women: Own wherever you are.
“If you’re in your mid-thirties, don’t be bogged down by the idea that you have to have children by a certain age.
“You decide. And if you want to have children, you don’t have to be defined by those old ideologies that this is what women ‘have’ to do.
“Do it only if you want to, because you give up a lot of your personal life to growing those other lives. And maybe you’re not a woman who wants to do that. No harm, no foul, no judgement.”
Berry previously said she loved being pregnant and would have had more children if she had started having kids sooner.
She told InStyle: “I felt the sexiest during both my pregnancies. I became a mom at 40. Knowing that someone would always be counting on me made me a better person. I’m more focused and in line with my values and my goals. I stopped letting negativity get me down. Plus, I loved being pregnant. Had I started earlier, I probably would have had five children. Or if I hadn’t been busy trying to make movies, I would have been the perfect surrogate. All the hormones made me feel amazing. I was so alive with my purpose and my femininity. It felt like my body was doing what it was built to do.
“Being a mom is the best job, but my kids don’t care about who I am outside of this house. The only thing I want at the end of the day is for my children to say, ‘You weren’t perfect, you didn’t do everything right, but you were a good mom’.”
She has talked about her experiences in motherhood on several occasions.
During an appearance on The Wendy Williams Show in 2012, Halle said, according to The Cut, that she was “so glad” she waited to have kids in her 40s. She said at ages 21 and 25 she was “just a little baby, just trying to figure it out.”
In 2021, she told Women’s Health that she was a “much better mother” to her kids since being in a relationship with her current partner, musician Van Hunt.
“I feel happy in my life romantically, as a mother, as an artist,” she said. “I’m a much better mother in this circumstance than I would have been had I stayed in a romantic relationship that didn’t serve me and didn’t make me feel the way I need to feel as a woman.”
Berry and Hunt publicly confirmed their romance in September 2020.
