CLEAN BREAK MARITAL SEPARATION, FRACTURED ARM - NOTHING CAN KEEP HALLE BERRY FROM MOVING FORWARD.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

Halle Berry has a big, Cheshire grin as she reports on her latest male trouble.

``He won't come out from under the bed,'' she says of the cat she adopted to study for the movie she's currently making, a Batmanless vehicle for the comic book hero's slinky nemesis/romantic interest, Catwoman. ``It's not working too well, actually. He's scared of me.''

Which, though she clearly finds it amusing, must also be kind of frustrating for the Academy Award-winning actress. But at least the shoe's on Puss-in-Boots now; the cat's scared, but not Berry, which is a very nice change from the way things once were.

``I'm really good,'' she says cheerfully, convincingly. ``Yeah, I am. Life is good, you know? Nothing to be upset about.''

Not even, apparently, the recent separation from her second husband, singer Eric Benet. Berry's happy, upbeat demeanor is the polar opposite of the self-lacerating one she carried seven years ago, shortly after the collapse of her first marriage to baseball player David Justice.

``I think the difference is that, when you spoke to me then, I was in fear that that was going to break me,'' says Berry, who was well-established at the time as one of the world's great beauties, if not yet ranked among its most respected actresses. ``He was my first big heartbreak in life, and dealing with it so publicly ... I was so fragile and scared. I've been around a little bit now. I've been through much worse than this, and I know that I'll be OK. I think I understand that, really, that's what life's about. I'm healthy, I've got enough food to eat, I've got my arms and my legs. ... Life is good.''

Scary movie

And it's good Berry has learned to overcome fear. She needed that to get through ``Gothika,'' her first supernatural horror movie. Opening Friday, it's the story of a criminal psychologist who, after an eerie encounter on a dark road, wakes up an inmate of the prison psych ward where she used to work, accused of horrifically murdering her husband.

It's a big star turn that involves a lot of running, fighting and freaking out. And although it's in a genre picture, the assignment proved to be as demanding - and as draining - as the role that earned Berry the only best-actress Oscar ever won by an African-American woman, the grief- stricken Leticia Musgrove in the 2001 ``Monster's Ball.''

``The hard part was to have that level of emotion for about three months,'' Berry says of ``Gothika'' character Dr. Miranda Grey's intense struggle with her own sanity, among many other trials. ``I didn't really consider that when I read the script. But two weeks into shooting, I was like, 'My God, I've got to do this for 10 more weeks? You're kidding?' That was the challenge. But it was also cathartic and, at the end of the day, felt good.''

Snap judgment 

Well, not at the end of every day. One day at the film's Montreal location, while doing a take with Robert Downey Jr. (who plays Miranda's former colleague in the film), Berry accidentally broke her arm.

`It was one of the early scenes where my character realizes that she's been institutionalized and doesn't understand why,'' she recalls. ``Of course, she's fighting, and Robert's character is trying to sedate me. We were fighting against each other, and my arm just twisted in the wrong way.

``No stunt coordinator was there. It wasn't anything that we thought would be that strenuous. But I guess we both were so into it and committed to going for the reality of the scene that it just cracked. I knew it was broken right away, and he did, too. I was on the floor in tears, screaming my head off. It was the most painful thing I've experienced that I remember.''

Not that she's complaining, though. After a six-week production shutdown, Berry was back on the strenuous job, a sheath of prosthetic skin covering her arm cast.

Which is one of the reasons why ``Gothika'' producer Joel Silver, the guy-film maven behind such testosterone-fueled franchises as ``Lethal Weapon'' and ``Predator,'' likes working with Berry any chance he gets.

``This is my fourth film with her, so we have a good relationship,'' says Silver, whose 1991 ``Last Boy Scout'' logged one of Berry's earliest screen appearances (and whose more recent ``Swordfish'' registered her first topless scene). ``Look, this movie's about a camera that follows her around for 65 days. She's in virtually every scene of the movie; in some of the scenes, there are two of her! She liked the idea of this kind of tour de force, and she felt she could do something cool and scary. So she said, 'I'm in.' ''

What's not to like?

There was never much doubt that Halle Berry is a guy's gal. But guess what? Women like the stunning Revlon spokesmodel, too.

``I love Halle,'' affirms Spanish actress Penelope Cruz, who plays one of Miranda's patients/fellow inmates in ``Gothika.'' ``She's so sweet. I connected with her immediately and, even though we only worked together for a few days, it was the best connection I've ever had with an actress. She made me feel like I could trust her.''

``I'm a woman who really likes other women, and I think that comes across when we work together,'' Berry explains. ``I don't feel threatened by them. I love women ... I mean, I'm not making an admission here of anything about my sexual orientation. But I really like women, and I like being a woman.

``So Penelope and I hit it off right away. There was one point when we were doing a scene and both of us had no makeup on. We were looking just as busted as we could possibly look, and we looked at each other and just thought, 'Look at us!' It was comedy for about five minutes, and it was great.''

Downplaying her looks for a role is nothing new for the Cleveland-born former Miss Teen All American and Miss Ohio USA. She played harrowing crack addicts in her first film, Spike Lee's ``Jungle Fever,'' and in the child custody drama ``Losing Isaiah.'' And her gold-toothed ``B*A*P*S'' fashion casualty is an acquired taste, to put it kindly.

Age of reason

But there is no denying that Berry's beauty has been an integral part of her success. However, as she approaches an age when, well, age begins showing, the actress sounds fearless on that front as well.

``I'm not concerned yet,'' Berry, 37, says with a shrug. ``I'm hoping that I become a woman who will be OK aging. I'm certainly OK with how I look now, and I know that I'm so much more than this shell that I walk around in. And when my shell becomes an issue as far as my work goes, hopefully I'm laying enough seeds now so that I'll be able to do other things that are within the industry that I love but won't require me to be in front of the camera.

``I'll be OK on that date. I won't be pulling my face back from here to Cleveland to try to stay in front of the camera. I'll bow out gracefully and I'll contribute some other way.''

On the off chance, of course, that that will ever really become necessary. By evidence of some of the shots that have been coming from the ``Catwoman'' set - Berry in beguiling, belly-revealing black leather strips, a whip curled dangerously in her right hand - nobody in the movies could possibly look finer.

``I've been doing an amazing, amazing amount of weight training with a physical trainer,'' Berry says. ``One, to rehabilitate my arm properly, because I went straight from wearing a cast to preparing for 'Catwoman.' And then, I had to be a little more muscle-y for Catwoman than I have for other things.''

Variety is the spice

Which begs the more urgent career question: Why, since she won her Oscar for a searingly realistic portrait of a troubled small-town woman, has Halle Berry been playing superheroines (``Catwoman,'' ``X2''), superspies (Jinx in the last James Bond movie, ``Die Another Day'') and haunted horror-movie psychiatrists? Shouldn't she be holding out for projects that are a little more classy?

``I didn't know what impact Oscar would have,'' admits Berry, who plans to produce and star in a character-based indie film next. ``I just feel good that I'm working and that I can make such diverse choices. I'm not stuck playing Leticia from 'Monster's Ball,' and I'm also not stuck playing Jinx from Bond. That feels good. For 10 years, I've been itching to work and do what I'm able to do now - get leading-lady parts that were good characters to play. So I'm ready to work - this is what I've been wanting.''

Plus, Berry is pleased to note, ``Gothika's'' Miranda Grey is - like Catwoman has been through various TV and film incarnations - a character undefined by her race.

``Just a woman,'' Berry says of how Miranda was described in the script. ``Hopefully, maybe, we're starting to be a little more colorblind today. That's what I like to think. I'm allowed to be just a woman, I don't always have to be black first. Nothing in this script changed (after she was cast), not one word.''

There is irony, of course, in the fact that Berry, who has long been professionally categorized by her skin color, was raised by her Caucasian mother after her father abandoned the family when she was a little girl. And Mom was a nurse in a Veterans Administration psych ward for 35 years - which meant she had more issues with the ``Gothika'' script, albeit of a technical-accuracy nature, than her daughter did.

``There was one part in the script where it was written that Robert's character actually slaps me,'' Berry recalls. ``Somehow, I didn't think it was right that doctors slap their patients. I asked her and she said, 'Oh God, no! There would be malpractice suits all over the place.' ''

When it comes to feline psychology, however, Berry has discovered that it's strictly learn by experience.

``You know, you have to earn the respect of cats, and you have to earn their affection,'' she says, still smiling but with the most serious tone she's managed to muster all day. ``That I've learned.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) `Life is Good'

Despite two failed marriages and terrifying new film, Halle Berry remains optimistic 

Gregg DeGuire/WireImage.com

(2) no caption (Halle Berry in ``Gothika'')

(3) no caption (Halle Berry)

James Devaney/WireImage.com