(August 14, 1966–      ): Academy Award–winning actress and former teen beauty queen who portrays Jinx, a sultry American NSA operative in Die Another Day. Her introduction—emerging from the surf in a striking orange bikini—was the writers’ homage to Ursula Andress’s debut in Dr. No. Her torture scene in the ice-structure lab of Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens) is also an homage, to Bond’s laser beam near-castration in Goldfinger. During shooting in Cádiz, Spain, Berry suffered a minor scare when a fragment from a smoke grenade got lodged in her left eye. At a nearby hospital, Berry underwent a thirty-minute procedure to remove the fragment, which fell on her in a sequence where Bond (Pierce Brosnan) shoots down an enemy helicopter.

As to following her Oscar-winning performance in Monster’s Ball (2001) with a part in a James Bond movie, Berry told the television program Entertainment Tonight, “People love James Bond. Being in a Bond movie right after winning an Oscar is the best thing I can do. It’s a big movie around the world, it’s splashy, it’s exciting, it’s sexy, it’s provocative, it’s fun, and it will keep me still out there after winning an Oscar. I can assure myself I’m not going to fall into obscurity after that grounding achievement.”[1] A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Berry made her motion picture debut in Spike Lee’s romantic drama Jungle Fever (1991). Her additional feature film credits include The Last Boy Scout (1991); The Flintstones (1994); The Rich Man’s Wife (1996); Bulworth (1998); X Men (2000), as the mutant Storm; Swordfish (2001); X-Men 2 (2003); Gothika (2003); Catwoman (2004); X-Men: The Last Stand (2006); New Year’s Eve (2011); Cloud Atlas (2012); X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014); and Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017).

[1] Halle Berry, interview, Entertainment Tonight, Paramount Domestic Television, November 18, 2002.