I started day-drinking in Covid & don’t care what people think, says Halle Berry

SHE is renowned for her strict diet and exercise regime but Oscar winner Halle Berry admits she has now started to embrace daytime drinking too.

Aged 57, she says she has started to put herself first and admits her boozing is a gift to “herself”.

Fans were stunned when her musician boyfriend of four years, 54-year-old Van Hunt, posted a ­picture on Instagram last month of her drinking naked on a balcony, to celebrate mother’s day in the US.

She says: “Copious amounts of red wine.

“That’s my guilty pleasure and my gift to myself because we all need those.”

The Monster’s Ball star says that she started day drinking during ­lockdown and doesn’t care what ­people may think, admitting: “I am a person today who takes no s**t and has no f***s to give.

“That’s a hard person to become because most people don’t want to deal with that person.

“They want to deal with the person that was more cordial and dealt with all their crap and didn’t say what they meant because you were taking care of all their egos.

“You play that role, but it’s more me now. I realise I have earned the right to evolve into someone ­different.­

“I no longer have to be that ­dancing bear. I don’t have to make people feel comfortable.

“I always know my intention and it’s never to hurt anyone, but I have a right to be who I am and not allow myself to be hurt.

“I have a right to call bulls*t when I see it.

“When you get to be 57 years old, you are often the oldest person in any room you find yourself in.

“And that’s a very comforting feeling, a very good feeling, because you have the experience to back it up.”       

Halle’s approach to life has clearly changed, but her youthful good looks appear frozen in time.

She is marking 20 years since she played comic book superhero Catwoman in 2004, and 30 years since her breakout part as Miss Stone in The Flintstones.

Her other film roles include playing Bond girl Jinx Johnson in 2002’s Die Another Day and prisoner’s wife ­Leticia Musgrove in 2001 film Monster’s Ball, for which she became the first black woman to win an Oscar and saw her filming a graphic sex scene.

Halle credits a keto diet, which involves high protein and low carbohydrate, for keeping her in top shape.

She embraced the regime after being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes aged 22.

The mum of two said: “I am keto. It’s basically protein and vegetables, no processed sugar, no pasta or rice, nothing white.

I can honestly say that I come before my kids, because if I am not my best self, then I cannot be anything for them

Halle Berry

“It’s just fish, lean meats and healthy fats — nuts and seeds.

“I can’t have dairy because I have an allergic reaction to it, but with keto for most people you can have dairy.

“I eat to live, I’m not a foodie. I feel bad that I’m not. I see food as my fuel.”

The star, mum to 16-year-old daughter Nahla Ariela from her relationship with model Gabriel Aubry, and who has ten-year-old son Maceo-Robert with her ex-husband, French actor, Olivier Martinez, admits she often forgets to eat.

She says: “If you don’t remind me to eat, I will probably forget.

“Sometimes on a weekend, when there is no one here but them and me, my kids will say, at 3.30pm, ‘Mum, hello, are we going to eat today?’

“I will be like, ‘OK yeah!’”

As for her tipple of choice, Halle — speaking with Gwyneth Paltrow on the fellow A-lister’s The Goop ­podcast — discussed her favourite wines.

She opts for organic, sugar-free varieties made in small, family-run vineyards and buys them from the website Dry Farm Wines, which says all its bottles come under 12.5 per cent alcohol ­levels for “conscious” consumption.

Halle says: “I have this special wine I drink, Dry Farms.

“I’m a Dry Farmer. It’s low in sugar and it’s low in alcohol and sulphites.

“It’s all those things. I started day drinking during Covid, which I never did before.”

She also says she embraced social media viral trends to cope with lockdown, which was particularly hard on Halle as she was dealing with a long-running ­custody and child support ­payment battles with Olivier, to whom she was married from 2013-2015, which were finally resolved last year.

A few years ago Halle discovered she was in perimenopause, the transitional phase toward menopause when the ovaries gradually begin to make less oestrogen.

She says she found it a shock that she had not managed to “skip” this stage, as she assumed her fitness and diet regime would make her “immune to these challenges”.

Now, middle age has made her realise she has to put herself first.

She explains: “As women, we get taught that everyone has to come before us.

“As mothers, our kids have to come before us.

“And I can honestly say that I come before my kids, because if I am not my best self, then I cannot be anything for them.”

Her inspiration for how to do her best for her kids came from deciding to do things differently to her own upbringing in Ohio, where her dad, who had alcohol issues, left the family home when she was three.

Speaking about her Liverpool-born mum Judith, who met her African American dad Jerome Berry in the US, she said: “I realised, I have to do better than my mother.

“I thought I had a great relationship with my mother but now, looking at the relationship I have with my children, I don’t think we did.

I realised, I have to do better than my mother

Halle Berry

“We have a relationship but it’s nowhere near what I have with my children today.

“Children were seen and not heard back then.

“Now all I do is want to hear what they have to say and understand how they are feeling.”

Of her daughter, Halle added: “She is only giving me trouble because she is going through puberty and I am going through menopause, so there are sometimes a lot of feelings flying around here.

“But I wouldn’t say she is real trouble.

“She has a very good head on her shoulders. She is still very innocent.

“She goes to performing arts school and she’s a singer and songwriter and musician and that takes up a lot of her time and energy and focus.

“So I’m lucky in that way. But even me, who runs hot all the time, she runs hotter than me.

“But she’s a really good kid.”