Halle Berry Says She Was Shy About Playing ‘Seductress’ Roles Until She Starred in ‘The Flintstones’

Believe it or not, there was once a time when Academy Award-winner and film legend Halle Berry didn’t think she had the range to play a femme fatale-type character, but then a very special movie taught her that there’s nothing she can’t yabba dabba do.

In 2025, the name “Halle Berry” is practically synonymous with “sex symbol with a sly edge,” but back when the most name-dropped superstar in hip-hop history was still working on her career turn from beauty queen to box-office sensation, the future Catwoman wasn’t confident that she could hack it in “vixen”-type roles. After all, Berry didn’t have any acting experience before making a name for herself in local and national beauty pageants, and she didn’t know if she would have the same success bringing grace, elegance and sexuality to Hollywood as she did to the Miss Ohio competition.

That all changed when Berry landed the role of a lifetime in a film that would give her the confidence to take on more acclaimed parts in films like Monster’s Ball and Die Another Day. In a recent Twitter post, Berry admitted that she was once a “shy” artist who was uncomfortable with harnessing her sexuality for a role, until she had the opportunity to become Sharon Stone.

In the 1994 live-action film adaptation of the classic cartoon The Flintstones, Berry played Sharon Stone, the seductive secretary to the new Slate & Co. Vice President who plans to pin a massive corporate theft on poor Fred Flintstone. And, while The Flintstones was a massive flop with the critical community, the movie still coasted to a massive $341 million return at the box office off of its beloved IP, its star power and the brilliant work of the costumer who dressed Berry.

As fate would have it, Berry was not the producers’ first choice to play Miss Sharon Stone — that was the real-life actress Sharon Stone who had to tap out of The Flintstones due to scheduling conflicts, but who lent her name to the character nonetheless. Nicole Kidman was also offered the role but turned it down for undisclosed reasons, leaving Berry the top candidate hot off the heels of a well-received performance in the Eddie Murphy romantic comedy vehicle Boomerang.

While The Flintstones may not have been as much of a landmark career moment as movies like Swordfish would be just a few years later, clearly Sharon Stone unlocked something in Berry that allowed her to reach her full potential, and, today, she is known as one of cinema’s all-time greatest seductresses. But, thankfully for the Flinstones themselves, even Berry couldn’t break Fred and Wilma’s marriage — that bond is rock-solid.