Winning an Oscar is as good as it gets for an actress, so how do you stay grounded after you’ve picked up that famous gold statue and placed it on your mantlepiece? Halle admits that the Oscar night left her on a high, but she kept herself grounded by telling herself that after the buzz was over, she had to return to herself and be normal again, even though she’s always felt like the underdog:
“I always felt like the underdog. Behind the eight ball. I learned not to be too high on the hog. Even that night I won the Oscar, I had a fundamental knowing, it was just a moment in time. Driving home that night, back to my house, I felt like Cinderella. I said, ‘When this night is over, I’m going back to who I was.’ And I did.”
Halle says that growing up, her mother helped her form an identity and realize how the world would look at her through life, and she was aware that beautiful and successful black women were rarely portrayed in the world at the time:
“My mother helped me identify myself the way the world would identify me. Bloodlines didn’t matter as much as how I would be perceived” — as beautiful but also as a black woman in a world in which the images of beautiful, successful black women were notably absent.”
