Actor: Halle Berry

Halle Berry won Best Actress for Monster’s Ball, becoming the first and to date only Black woman to win the category, and her acceptance speech was explicitly about the women who had been denied it.

The subsequent career did not follow the trajectory that award usually produces, which she has discussed directly, and Catwoman two years later is one of the more notorious studio failures.

Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, X-Men, Die Another Day and Cloud Atlas fill out the range.

She directed Bruised, which she also starred in, training in mixed martial arts for it, and has been consistently outspoken about opportunity in the industry.