Halle Berry’s experience growing up biracial was confusing. 

The Oscar-winning actress appeared on Conan O’Brien’s podcast “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” and shared her experience being raised by a white mother while living in a predominantly Black neighborhood and how that left her with deep questions about identity. “I felt very confused about my identity growing up,” she revealed. “If my mother's white and I'm Black, what does that mean? Who am I? Am I really Black? Am I half Black? Am I mixed? Am I not mixed? I don't feel very white. I don't look very white, but yet I have this white mother. It's part of me. There was a lot of confusion growing up.”

Berry’s comments about race, identity, and visibility reveal an internal battle she carried around as a child. She also shared the ways appearance, family background, and community expectations collided during her childhood, and how that early confusion shaped her sense of self even as she moved into a high-profile entertainment career. 

Berry recalled wanting to emulate aspects of her white mother’s appearance, specifically her mother’s blonde hair. A young Berry would wear a yellow towel on her head, pretending to have the same blonde tresses as her mother. After witnessing her daughter’s struggles, Halle’s mom explained the reality of the situation. “She told me, ‘You will be identified as you are. You will be perceived as Black. You are Black, and if you accept this part of you, your life will be indelibly easier,’” Berry said.

Berry also shared that a Black fifth-grade teacher helped change her trajectory, telling her she was “amazing just as you are,” and the teacher became so important in her life that she later became Berry’s child’s godmother. 

Those early, painful lessons — including horrific bullying that had a young Berry fighting for her respect. She recalled the fight that left her almost naked in a gutter as kids (boys included) kicked her and laughed at her. That was the day she chose to fight back, not with her fists, but with her achievements. She refused to accept the humiliation the kids in her school were determined to force on her. She said, “I was going to be the class president. I was going to be on the honor roll… I did all the things so that I could not be denied.”

That search for belonging, Berry said, ultimately hardened into a refusal to be boxed in, and it informed the daring choices that later defined her career. She told O’Brien that her realization that she was Black and that it was okay made taking risks feel necessary, rather than optional. 

She said, “If this ends my career, then I'm ending my own career on my own beliefs.” The identity questions she carried as a child became the engine for a career built on insisting on more — more complex parts, more agency, and, in time, the very breakthrough that led to her Oscar win, which allowed her to make history as the first Black woman (and as of 2026) and the only to win the trophy for Best Actress.