Halle Berry has smashed rumours that she will play chat show heroine Oprah Winfrey in a biopic of the TV host’s famously troubled life.
While sitting down with Ellen Degeneres on her daytime show, Berry revealed that she’s clueless as to why she’s been linked to the role.
“I’m not going to play Oprah, no,” she says. “I was just like, ‘Hey, Oprah, Am I playing you? Just tell me because nobody has told me this.’ I don’t know where these rumours come from.”
Winfrey has long been an ambassador for spirituality, having overcome a traumatic childhood that saw her fall pregnant at 14.
She went on to win the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant at 17, and became the first black female news anchor at Nashville’s WLAC-TV station. She really hit her stride when, in 1983, she took over the AM Chicago show, which became the highest rated show in the city.
A fascinating life, then – and Berry has hinted that if she were actually offered the role, she might take it.
“I don’t know [ if there will be a movie ],” she says. “Not that I wouldn’t want to play Oprah if there was a movie. I just don’t know how this stuff gets made up.”