Actress Halle Berry played Santa for a minute as she dropped off a Christmas gift at a friend’s house Thursday afternoon (Dec 17) in Los Angeles.
The 43-year-old film star spoke out about seeing her father beat her mother when she was younger. On the low, she’s been volunteering during the night shift at a center for battered women in LA for a few years, but she spilled the beans about her abusive memories for the first time earlier this week.
Halle told The Sunday Times: “I saw my mother battered, and could not do anything to stop it – my father was tyrannical, lashing out at her for no reason. I felt the effects that had on our family — I’ve experienced what these women have gone through.” The Monster’s Ball star said her mother did not know why she stayed with her father for so long. Halle said: “That is a deep question, and I am not sure she will ever come up with one answer. I have one answer to anyone in a similar situation — get out.”
The Oscar winning actress never forgave her father, a hospital porter, even as he lay dying with Parkinson’s disease in 2003. She said he sold his account of their estrangement to a tabloid “for a pack of beer and cigarettes.” Halle is now in a happy relationship with Versace model Gabriel Aubry, father to her 20-month-old daughter Nahla, but said her parents’ relationship had affected her choice of men in the past. She said: “I never had to run to a shelter, but I did choose the wrong partners. Not always good men. Luckily, in recent years, I have been smart enough to hit the door when violence even becomes a possibility. That is something I will not tolerate.”
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PHOTOS: WENN
