Halle Berry became the first Black woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress when she took the stage at the Kodak Theatre on March ́24, ́2002, for her performance in “Monster’s Ball,” a milestone that remains unequaled. Butteryears before that historic night, she survived a period of profound personal collapse that she has described in raw detail, including a moment she sat in a car with the engine running and nearly ended her life. that chapter of her life has been discussed openly — the violence in her childhood home, the collapse of her first marriage, and a restraining order she obtained against her then-husband. For nearly three decades, however, she has remained silent about one brief relationship that has become a recurring footnote in conversations around her story.
That is the relationship with actor Shemar Moore. The pair attended the Golden Globe Awards together in January 1997aandwerephotographed beside each other on the red carpet. It was over within a few months. Moore has spoken about that relationship many times over the years.
Berry has never commented on it publicly. Her silence, given how candid she has been about other wounds, has itself become part of the story. To understand what happened, the story begins years earlier. Berry was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in August ́1966.
Her father, Jerome, was an alcoholic who beat her mother, Judith. He left the family home when Berry was ten years old. She has spoken about this part of her life for decades, describing it as weight she carried long before fame arrived. Her first public steps came through pageants.
She became Miss Teen All-Americanin ́1985, then Miss Ohio USA, and first runner-upat Miss USA. From there, she moved into modeling, then television, then film. Her breakthrough came in ́1991, when Spike Lee cast her in“Jungle Fever” Asvivian, a crack addict. Berry reportedly refused to bathe for days before filming because she wanted to feel closer to the role.
That same year, she appeared in“Strictly Business” and“The Last Boy Scout. ” In ́1992, she starred in“Boomerang” opposite Eddie Murphy. By then, she was a rising film actress in her mid-twenties. The road tot hat point had not been direct.
She was watching an MTV celebrity baseball game when she noticed one of the playersDavid Justice, an outfielder for the Atlanta Braves, already a star. He had been National League Rookie of the Year in ́1990 and had helped win a World Series. This was ́1992. There was no direct message to send, no easy way to slide into someone’s life through a screen.
So Berry found another way. While doing press, she gave her phone number to a reporter who knew them both. She asked him to have Justice call her. He did.
Justicehas given his own account of what happened next. During an August ́2025 appearance on the“All the Smoke” podcast, he said Berry asked him to marry her after they had known each other for five months. He also said he had second thoughts about the engagement but went forward because he did not want to hurt her feelings. They married on New Year’s Day, ́1993.
He has also been blunt about why the marriage struggled. He said he was a Midwest guy who had grown up looking at his mother as the model of what a wife was supposed to be. In his mind, a wife should cook and clean. But Berry was not living that kind of life.
Her career was moving fast. Her days were filled with scripts, auditions, travel, and pressure. Justice later said that if they had understood therapy back then, they probably could have made it. The marriage ended badly.
The public record of that ending comes through court filings rather than gossip. They separated in February ́1996. Berry filed for divorce in April, citing irreconcilable differences. About two weeks later, Justice filed his own papers.
Their divorce was finalized in June ́1997. During that period, Berry went to court. She asked for, and received, a restraining order requiring Justice to stay at least five hundred yards away from her Hollywood Hills home. In the filing, she said she feared for her personal safety and well-being.
According to People magazine’s reporting at the time, Berry claimed Justice had been outside their home for four hours demanding to be let in so he could retrieve his belongings. Justice has publicly denied that the incident happened. The matter was never tested at trial, so there was no final legal finding on what happened that day. A temporary restraining order is usually granted based on a sworn declaration from the person asking for protection.
Its purpose is immediate protection based on stated fear at that moment. In ́1996, a court found Berry’s stated fear serious enough to order Justice fivethundred yards away from her home. Justice has maintained for nearly thirty years that he did nothing to justify that order. Then there was the pain Berry was carrying inside, which she did not reveal publicly until years later.
Ina ́2003 interview with“Parade” magazine, she said that after the collapse of her first marriage, she came dangerously close to taking her own life. She described sitting in her car, the engine running, ina closed space. Then one image stopped her. She thought of her mother finding her.
That thought pulled her back. She later described her state of mind with one of the most important lines of her life. She said her sense of worth was so low. After that, she made a promise to herself.
She said she would never be a coward again. That moment sits on top of a deeper history. Berry had grown up with a father who drank, hurt her mother, and left when she was ten. Over the years, she told journalists that some of her painful choices in men were connected to that wound.
People magazine had noticed the pattern early. In ́1996, the same year as the separation and the restraining order, one of its reporters wrote that Berry had been “on the receiving end of manipulation and deceit in relationships,” E! Two years later, the magazine noted that Berry had been explaining her romantic choices through the damage left by her father for much of the previous decade. Theshape of the story was visible even then.
Now, place her first date with Shemar Moore against that background. The woman Moore later described falling hard for in ́1997 had recently survived the end of a painful marriage. She had gone to court for protection. She had sat in a car and wondered whether she could keep living.
That context changes the frame of therelationship. Moore was born on the twentieth of April, ́1970, inOakland, California. He was an only child. His mother, Marilyn, was a teacher.
His father, Sherrod, was an Army veteran. When Moore was still a baby, his mother took him abroad. His parents separated shortly afterward, and he did not return to the United States for years. He has spoken openly about what that childhood did to him.
Asa biracial boy, he struggled early with his identity and his appearance. Mom’s encouragement helped him build his own sense of self. Both Moore and Berry were biracial children born in the nineteen-sixties and seventies. Both were raised mainly by their mothers.
Both entered entertainmentin the early nineties, when the industry had very little language for people who lived between racial categories. Hollywood still wanted to sort people neatly. Moore graduatedfromcollege, andin ́1994, landed the role that made him famous. He became Malcolm Winters on the CBS daytime serial“The Young and the Restless,” a role he would play until ́2005.
Before Halle Berry, there was Toni Braxton. In ́1995, Moore appeared as her romantic interest in the music video for“How Many Ways. ” He has said he was young, broke, fresh out of college, working ona soap opera. He says Braxton called his agent while filming a video in Miami, and the connection grew from there.
In ́1997, he met Berry. That year, they attended the Golden Globe Awards together. That red carpet appearance remains basically the only public artifact of the relationship—a photograph, a night out, two rising stars standing beside each other while almost no one knew the full story. To understand that photograph, it helps to understand the power of daytime television in the mid-nineties.
“The Youngandthe Restless” was the highest-rated daytime drama in America. Ayoung male lead on that show was a major face in American television. Moore was twenty-six, three years into a huge television role, and already one of the most recognized young Black actors on daytime television. Berry was thirty.
She had already built a serious film career, and something bigger was coming toward her. They stood together on that red carpet while privately agreeing that the relationship had to stay quiet. Within a few months, it was over. They appeared together at the Golden Globes in January ́1997.
By spring or early summer, they had separated. Berry’s divorce from Justice was still not finalized until June. No one has ever given a public reason for the breakup. Years later, Moore sat down with BET and gave the version of the relationship that most articles have repeated ever since.
He said Berry was the first woman to really knock his socks off, and he fell hard for her. He also explained why so few people knew about them at the time. According to Moore, people know now that they dated, but back then they had to keep it hush-hush becauseBerry was fresh off her divorce from Justice. With the earlier chapters in mind, that line carries much more weight.
Berry was in the middle of a divorce. Arestraining order had been part of that period. She had recently been through a private mental health crisis. Starting a new relationship under those conditions meant privacy was not just about image.
It was a serious choice made in a delicate situation. That may also explain why Berry has never spoken publicly about the relationship. Moore said he was drawn to Berry because they were similar in important ways. She was biracial andshe was dealing with many of the same things he was facing in Hollywood.
That shared experience matters. Both had spent their lives being asked to choose a category. Both had entered an industry that often chose for them. Moore has described that connection as the real foundation of the relationship.
In ́1997, being visibly biracial in Hollywood could shape the roles you were offered, the way reporters described you, and the way the public tried to understand you. When he was asked to compare Toni Braxton with Halle Berry, Moore gave the line that followed both women for years. “Tony wasa fun ride, but Halle was a necessary experience. ” He did not leave it there.
Moore explained that being with Berry made him stronger as a man. He also said the relationship taught him what kind of woman he wanted in his future. He has said many times that he remains thankful for that time with her. He has also wished her well in her love life in public.
There is no cruelty in the way he speaks about her. There is no obvious bitterness, either. Still, the shape of the story matters. Because this is the only shape the public has ever been given.
For twenty-nine years, the public version of Berry’sin ́1997 has mostly been a story about what that year did for the man she dated. That one interview traveled far. Entertainment sites picked it up again and again. Most led with the“socks” line.
Many repeated the“hush-hush” part. Almost none had anything from Berry herself. In November ́2024, Moore spoke with “People” foran exclusive interview about his thirty years in Hollywood. He brought up Berry again.
This time, his point was less about the relationship itself and more about what dating her had done for his image. “I hada pretty good entrance into Hollywood,” he said. He explained that early in his career, people knew him as the guy who dated Halle Berryin ́1997 and Toni Braxtonin ́1995. Women would come up to him andask if he wanted to hang out.
His answer, he said, was an easy yes. “Fora time, I was more popular as that guy than I was asan actor. ”He later acknowledged that he could be difficult in relationships andsaid he always kept things honest with the women he dated. Business now looks very different.
He has been with actress Jesirey Dizon for several years. Their daughter, Frankie, was born in January ́2023, making Moore a father for the first time at fifty-two. There is another part of this story, and it has to be handled carefully because the internet has often handled it terribly. Berry has spoken in public about surviving domestic violence.
She has said that she suffered permanent hearing loss in one ear after being struck during a relationship. She has never named the person who did it. In ́2015, Justice went on social media and responded to years of speculation. He denied that he was responsible.
He also claimed that Berry had told him the person was a former Hollywood boyfriend. And he referred to that person only by initials. Justice went further ina post that was later deleted. He alleged that Berry had been angry at him for leaving the relationship andsaid that she and her Hollywood team “just tried to destroy my character.
’That moment needs careful separation from rumor. Berry has never confirmed the identity of the person she described. Justice’s version of that private conversation belongs to him. The initials he mentioned have never been verified.
Most importantly, nothing in the public record connects that disclosure to Moore. The timeline matters here. Berry’s relationship with Moore began after her marriage to Justice had already fallen apart. It lasted only a few months.
No one, including Berry, has ever described that relationship as anything other than brief. It belongs here because it shows the world Berry has had to live inside. A painful disclosure about being hit became a public argument between other people. The focus shifted from her injury to their reputations.
The conversation happened in tweets with initials andwithout her voice. A woman says she was struck hard enough to lose hearing in oneear. She chooses not to name anyone. Then the internet turns her trauma intoa guessing game about which former partner hurt her.
She lost hearing. People chased names. That alone helps explain why Berry may have no interest in revisiting who she dated in the spring of ́1997. The timeline must also be correctedbecause ino often repeated carelessly.
This relationship did not happen thirty-five years ago. Berry and Moore were photographed together at the Golden Globes in January ́1997. By that summer, they were over. The relationship happened twenty-nine years ago, and it lasted only months.
The silence stands out because Berry has spoken openly about many painful parts of her life. She has talked about her father’s alcoholism andthe violence in her childhood home. She has spoken abouta suicidal episode ina car. She has discussed the ending of three marriages.
She has talked about diabetes, hearing loss, motherhood, and her long relationship with musician Van Hunt. Berry met singer Eric Benétat one of his concerts in ́1997, the same year she dated Moore. She later said Benét felt differentfrom the men who came before him. They married on January ́24th, ́2001, separated in ́2003, and divorced in ́2005, after he was unfaithful.
The split was widely reported alongside his treatment for sex addiction. Berry told “Parade” that she thought about suicide after that divorce, just as she had after her first divorce. For years after that, she told interviewers she would never marry again. Then, inJuly ́2013, she married French actor Olivier Martinez.
That marriage ended in divorce two years later. She has children fromtwo relationships. Her daughter, Nahla, was born in ́2008. Her son, Maceo, was born in ́2013.
She has lived through custody battles that became public, even though she did not choose that kind of exposure. Berry is not someone who has hidden every wound. She is one of the most open major stars of her generation. That makes her silence about those few months in ́1997 even more meaningful.
Meanwhile,the story does exist. It exists through Moore’s voice. At the time, he was twenty-six, working on a soap opera, broke, and by his own description still learning who he was. His account has always sounded affectionate.
He has not spoken about her with cruelty. Butit is still his account. It was told in interviews about his career. At moments when he was explaining his own rise.
That is how many stories about famous women in the nineties reached the public. Someone else told the story first, and the woman at the center was left to live beside it. In ́2002, five years after sitting in that car, she stood on stage and became the first Black woman in the seventy-four-year history of the Academy Awards to win Best Actress. Her speech became one of the most watched acceptance speeches ever recorded.
She could barely speak through the emotion. She dedicated the moment to the women who had come before her andnever got the chance, andto every nameless faceless woman of color who now had a door opened. Twenty-four years later, she remains theonly Black woman to have won that award. That fact says more about Hollywood than any old dating story ever could.
The woman at the center of this story should not be reduced to a few months in ́1997. She reached that stage five years after sitting ina carwith the engine running wondering if she could keep going. In that car, she told herself she would never be a coward again. Thenext twenty-nine years suggest she meant it.
That includes the part where she decides which stories belong to the public andwhich ones stay with her.
