Halle Berry Reveals That Her ‘Constant Worry’ for Her Kids Helped Her in Her New Movie Never Let Go

In Halle Berry‘s new movie, Never Let Go, the Oscar winner will have viewers gripping to their seats. In it, Berry plays a mother who goes to extreme lengths to protect her sons as an unknown evil looms over their home.

Speaking to SheKnows, Berry admitted that her maternal instincts – Berry is a mom to her 16-year-old daughter, Nahla, and 10-year-old son Maceo – played a big part in embodying her character.

“I became a mom 16 years ago and for the last 16 years, I have not slept the same,” Berry admits. “I’ve not had a good night’s sleep for 16 years because of that maternal instinct and that mother’s constant worry and care and concern for her children. I mean, once you become a mom or a parent you’re forever changed and so that’s the easy part of what I bring to these mom roles.”

“It’s in my body,” she adds. “I understand a mother’s love, a mother’s fierce protection of her kids.”

But while Berry could step into those maternal shoes, the nature of this horror movie presented a whole other challenge. “This one was different for me in the sense that this is a different kind of mother, she’s living in a dark place in the world and in her head, we don’t know if she’s struggling with mental illness, if the evil is really real, we don’t know if she’s protecting these boys or if she’s torturing these boys and the truth is, all of those all a little bit true,” Berry says of the movie, which hits theaters on Sept. 20. “But at the end of the day, what is evident at some point in the movie, you realize a mother’s love is fierce and a mother’s love actually stops at nothing. There’s no barrier between what a mother will do to save her children and that certainly connected me to this character.”

If you haven’t figure it out already, Berry’s character in this movie is far from straightforward. With a feeling that they’re being pursued and watched, she pulls out all the stops to protect her kids, like tying ropes around them when they ever leave the house, even if it’s against their wishes.

For Berry, playing a character as complex as this one was a true “joy.”

“I think as an actor that’s what we want to do,” she says. “We want to find those complexities. I’ve never been someone who’s afraid to play the ugliness of a character or the darkness of a character because that’s inside all of us, we’re all imperfect, right? And I’ve never been afraid to lean into those things and that’s what actually makes characters relatable, when we see the truth of something and I love it.”

“I wanted her to be a mom but I wanted her to be a truthful mom in this situation and she had to have some tough love and she had to do things at times that seemed unthinkable but when you think about it, it was really for the greater good of the whole family,” she says.

And in addition to becoming this fearless mother onscreen, Berry also became a mentor to her co-stars Anthony B. Jenkins and Percy Daggs IV.

“Someting that I will never, ever forget that Miss Holly told me as that my superpower in acting is my eyes,” Jenkins says of Berry. “And not only that, but when I was going through this audition, I was nervous, I didn’t know what to do. I was in a scene where I was but I was having to heavy breathe and she she told me that maybe before a scene [I should] jump up and down, run, get your adrenaline pumping, get your heart pumping so I could be heavy breathing.”

“She’s a very helpful and kind person,” he adds.

Daggs also got some priceless advice from the Catwoman star. “To always stay focused and always understand the material, make sure that you’re always locked in and that you don’t steer off course, and that you understand what you’re doing and that you understand who your character is,” he says. Talk about some acting gold!

Never Let Go hits theaters on Sept. 20.

Before you go, click here to see our favorite movies and TV shows about imperfect, complicated women.