Halle Berry, former Catwoman, saves black cat family

It’s been 20 years since Catwoman, and Halle Berry is still the cat’s meow.

The Oscar winner posted a series of photos of herself and a family of black cats, which she said she rescued after finding them in her yard. “I found these two little fur babies in my yard along with their 2 siblings and their mom!” Berry wrote on Instagram. “I got the mommy spayed and released her back in my yard and she’s now our outdoor cat.”

Berry said that she’s keeping two of her new feline friends, which she named Boots and Coco, and placed their siblings with another caretaker. “The other 2 babies I’ve found a forever home for and these two are our new lovies,” she wrote. “It’s a full house over here!”

Berry’s Catwoman was critically derided upon its release in 2004, and comic book fans expressed irritation that the film’s vision of the antihero bore almost no resemblance to the DC source material. In the film, her alter ego was Patience Phillips, an artist who was resurrected by an Egyptian cat spirit and granted cat-themed superpowers, whereas in the comics, she’s a skilled burglar named Selina Kyle who usually doesn’t have abilities beyond that of an expert thief.

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Despite the negative reception of the movie, Berry has embraced the legacy of the project and character, and even said she’d consider making a sequel. ”I think I’m really hoping to do another Catwoman,” she said shortly after the movie’s release. ”Everybody just wanted to crack that whip… when you get your first crack, you just want to keep on cracking.”

Berry acknowledged Catwoman’s subpar quality when she accepted the Razzie for Worst Actress in 2005. ”I have so many people to thank, because you don’t win a Razzie without a lot of help from others,” including ”Warner Bros., for putting me in a godawful piece of s— movie.”

In 2021, Berry told Entertainment Weekly that she doesn’t regret Catwoman. “For me,” she said, “it was one of the biggest paydays of my whole life, which, there’s nothing wrong with that…. I don’t want to feel like ‘Oh, I can only do award-worthy stuff.’ What is an award-worthy performance?”

Berry has also sent well-wishes to other performers taking on the part. “Special shout-out to your new #CatWoman, the eternally graceful & extremely bad ass @ZoeKravitz,” she wrote on social media upon the announcement that Zoe Kravitz would portray Selina Kyle in 2022’s The Batman. “Keep shining Queen & welcome to the family!” She also gave her stamp of approval to Saweetie’s Catwoman Halloween costume in 2021, appearing in a video hyping up the musician’s outfit. 

Though Berry’s portrayal of the character came early in the 21st-century superhero movie boom, she was already the sixth actor to play the character in live action — Julie Newmar, Eartha Kitt, and Lee Meriwether all donned the mask opposite Adam West’s Batman in the 1960s; Michelle Pfeiffer cracked the whip in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns in 1992; and stunt performer Casey Elizabeth Easlick briefly appeared as the character in the short-lived WB series Birds of Prey in 2002.

”Catwoman’s been done by great women, and I’m just hoping I can stand among them and add some of my own personality,” Berry told EW while preparing for the film in 2003. “I’m trying to get my purr just right.”