2023 Oscars: Halle Berry presents Best Actress award to Michelle Yeoh

• Halle Berry presented the 2023 Oscars winning award to Michelle Yeoh.
• Will Smith was banned from participating in the events for 10 years.
• Halle won the Best Actress Oscar award in 2002.

During the 2023 Oscars, Halle Berry will hand the reins over.

The 56-year-old director and star of Bruised, who had previously won Best Actress for her work in 2001’s Monster’s Ball, appeared on stage with Jessica Chastain to hand Michelle Yeoh the award for her work in Everything Everywhere All at Once.

In a little departure from standard Oscars practice, Berry gave Yeoh her award as the two exchanged hugs on stage at the Dolby Theater. Normally, the Best Actor winner from the preceding year gives the award, but Will Smith won last year for his performance in King Richard.

After famously punching Chris Rock in the face onstage after Rock made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, Smith, 54, resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which also barred him from attending its events for ten years.

As she gave Yeoh the prize on Sunday, Berry made no mention of Smith or the commotion surrounding the Oscars ceremony the year before.

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Berry won the Best Actress Oscar in 2002, beating out Renée Zellweger (Bridget Jones’s Diary), Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge), Judi Dench (Iris), Sissy Spacek (In the Bedroom), and Judi Dench.

Berry was the first woman of color to ever win Best Actress at the Oscars till she presented Yeoh with the trophy on Sunday. Berry spoke candidly about her dismay at how, after 20 years, no other Black actress had won the award.

“Back in those days, if you didn’t win the Globe, you really didn’t get the Academy Award,” Berry said, referring to the Golden Globe that went to Spacek, 73. “So I’d pretty much resigned myself to believing, ‘It’s great to be here, but I’m not going to win.’ ”

But even though she did go on to clinch the prize, the actress continued, “It didn’t open the door. The fact that there’s no one standing next to me is heartbreaking.”

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