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Halle Berry had a bit of help when she had to do her iconic love scene in Monster’s Ball. The Oscar-winner took some unexpected inspiration from her fellow movie star Nicole Kidman.

How Nicole Kidman played a part in Halle Berry’s love scene in ‘Monster’s Ball’

Berry’s love scene in Monster’s Ball generated a lot of conversation at the time of the film’s release. It was intentionally visceral, and so graphic that the film’s director worried Berry would’ve protested the shot. But although Berry didn’t veto the scene, she explained to the filmmaker she had a few conditions for the role.

”I would only do it if Billy Bob agreed to be as naked as I was,” Berry once told The New York Times.

But she might not have done Monster’s Ball at all if it wasn’t for Swordfish. The latter was a 2001 hacker film that saw Berry undressing for onscreen for the first time. Her experience in the role unknowingly helped prep the Oscar-winner for Monster’s.

“In Swordfish, it was totally gratuitous nudity, and I knew it. But I probably wouldn’t have been able to do the sex scene in Monster’s Ball if I hadn’t shown my breasts in Swordfish,” she said.

Berry also received motivation to do the scene from Nicole Kidman. The Blue Room was a 1998 play where Kidman ended up exposing herself on stage. It was a performance Berry couldn’t believe when she first saw it, but it would later inform her own performance in Monster’s Ball.

“I remember when Nicole Kidman was naked on stage and I thought, ‘How could she?’ Eventually, when the opportunity presented itself to me, I just bit the bullet and did it,” Berry once said according to Irish Examiner.

Billy Bob Thornton once said his ‘Monster’s Ball’ love scene with Halle Berry felt real

Thornton shared that his love scene with Berry was a true collaborative effort. Speaking with Sway’s Universe, the Bad Santa star revisited the famous take, some of which wasn’t even scripted.

“I might’ve been a little bit nervous beforehand, but once we got into it, it was essentially ad-libbed,” Thornton said. “I mean, there was some dialogue for that scene in the script, but we kind of just winged it. We had to hold each other’s hands through it a little bit.”

During the interview, Thornton took the time to dispel a rumor that he was actually intimate with Berry in the movie. But in a 2014 interview with HuffPost, he asserted that the line between fact and fiction was slightly blurry.

“It felt so real when we were doing it that [we felt] the heaviness surrounding the circumstances in the story,” Thornton said. “I think maybe that’s why it comes across so well on screen, because it was two desperate human beings in this moment alone, and we kind of were alone.”

Many thought ‘Monster’s Ball’ would end Halle Berry’s career

Some in Berry’s team didn’t think Monster’s Ball was a good career move. Everything that drew her to the project was what others didn’t like about it.

“But then people around me said, ‘Ooh, it’s a very low-budget movie. It’s very risqué. There’s some sexual components to it that maybe you don’t want to do. The subject matter, it’s got a lot of racial components to it. I don’t know if you want to touch this.’ And those were all the reasons why I loved it,” she said in an interview with Vanity Fair not too long ago.

The X-Men actor was so passionate about the film, however, that she was willing to put her career on the line for it.

“And I thought, ‘If this ends my career,’ like many people thought it would, I thought, ‘well, I’m going to end my own career on my own volition. I’m going to end my career doing something that inspires me, that ignites me, that excites me.’ And it was a risk and I love taking risks and I’ve always known, if you don’t risk big, you can’t win big,” she said.

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