She's played a Bond girl, a mutant and a catwoman. She's won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, an Emmy and all kinds of accolades for her barrier-breaking acting roles. She's been a mainstay on the "most beautiful" lists for more than a decade. At the age of 40, Halle Berry still has the striking good looks of the 24-year-old ingénue who made her movie debut in Spike Lee's film Jungle Fever.

If she doesn't look any older, by her own admission, Berry (who has always had a spiritual, philosophical side) is a lot wiser. Two divorces have left her with a definite opinion about marriage. That's not to say that she's given up on love – she's been seeing 31-year-old Gabriel Aubry, a French- Canadian model, for more than a year now. The other important person in her life these days is her mother, a retired psychiatric nurse who lives just down the road from Berry's Los Angeles home, where the actress has been spending a lot of her time lately.

Still, her career continues to keep her busy. Her current film gives fans a chance to see the older, wiser Berry play an investigative reporter in Perfect Stranger, a murder mystery co-starring Bruce Willis. The next role she's contemplating is one she hasn't yet tried: motherhood.

RD: You're known as a woman of grace and accomplishment. But tell us about your childhood, which sounds difficult.
Berry: Yeah, but not as difficult as it's been reported. I always had food and clothes. I had a wonderful, responsible parent who loved me.

RD: Your mum (see image) raised you and your older sister, Heidi, on her own, right?
Berry: Yes, she was strong and independent. Imperfect, as every parent is, but she did her best. Did we have our challenges, two little black girls being raised by a white mother? Sure. We didn't have a lot of money, but we had enough. I don't remember ever going without anything I thought I wanted or needed, so somehow she made it all work out.

RD: Your father was a different story.
Berry: That was a challenging part of my childhood – the missing link. It's hard when you grow up without a father, but it's particularly hard for little girls not to have that image of what a man is. It's forced me to struggle with what to look for, because I didn't really have a role model.

RD: How do you think that has affected your relationships with men?
Berry: Adversely, obviously. I was attracted to what I knew, which was usually not what was good for me.

RD: Your father died in 2003. Were you ever able to make peace?
Berry: I was just getting over my anger and sense of betrayal and abandonment. I was getting to the point where I could understand how and why he could do that, and then he died. I have done a lot of healing since his death. I don't think somebody has to be here for you to heal your relationship.

RD: After your mother and father split up, your mother moved you and Heidi to a different neighbourhood.
Berry: We were living in Cleveland. When I was in the third grade, my mother drove by the high school where my sister and I would go, and the place was full of graffiti. Instantly, she decided to move us to the suburbs, to what she thought was a better school – which it was. But it was an all-white environment, and I don't think she thought about how that would affect us. I went from an all-black neighbourhood to an all-white environment. We were among maybe five black kids at school.

RD: How did you cope?
Berry: I was struggling with my identity – being around all these white people. Where did I fit in? One of the few black teachers, Yvonne Sims, was like an angel. She came along when I felt myself going in a direction that could have been really bad. She took me in . . . through her I knew I was OK. I admire her. She's beautiful, a wonderful mother, married for 30 years. The epitome of what I would want to be.

RD: After high school, you moved to Chicago to pursue a career in modelling. Is it true that when you moved to New York to begin your acting career, you lived in a shelter?
Berry: Very briefly. My modelling career was lucrative, but I gave it up when I moved to New York, and I wasn't working for a while.

RD: How old were you then?
Berry: I was about 21. But a girl had to do what a girl had to do. You can do that when you're 21 and ambitious and ... you don't want to go home.

RD: Going home would have been what – a sign of failure?
Berry: There was a defining moment in my life, something that happened with my mother. I don't know if I've ever talked about this publicly. My mother was always supportive, but she wanted me to go to university. When I moved to Chicago, I don't think she thought it would pan out. After a month or two, I ran out of money and called her. I said, "Mum, could you send me some money? I just have rent money; I can't eat this week." She said no. It was devastating because she had never said no to me. I didn't speak to her for a year and a half, but... I became self-sufficient. I vowed never to ask anybody for anything. When I moved to New York and hit that hard spell, I was determined not to ask anybody, especially her.
RD: Especially her?
Berry: Especially. But I'm grateful she did that, because it taught me how to look after myself and that I could live through any situation, even if it meant going to a shelter...

RD: You've become a philanthropist, especially concerning disadvantaged children. Are you inspired by your personal experience?
Berry: One of the most important charities that I'm part of is the Genesee Center for battered and abused women and children in Los Angeles.

RD: Is it, again, your own experience that drives you?
Berry: Well, I haven't been a battered woman... Have I been in physical altercations with men? Absolutely. But the minute that happens, they see the back of me. My mother was battered by my father. And I have an affinity for children who live with that horror and fear. I'm moved to want to help, especially in the black community where I think sometimes we're forgotten.

RD: What goes on at the Center?
Berry: We're putting together a plan for women and children to give them the skills they need – education, therapy and counselling – so they won't ever have to come to a shelter.

RD: How do you keep yourself grounded? I've read that you're a big fan of psychotherapy.
Berry: My mother introduced my sister and me to psychology when my father left. I've been in group therapy, and I know how beneficial it is. I have a longtime therapist with whom I stay in touch. Whenever something is going a little off, I check in.

RD: Your fans want you to have the best in life. After you broke up with your last husband, Eric Benét, people were in your corner. They want you to be happy, to –
Berry: Get it right. Yup. I know that. And I want people to get it right.

RD: Are your eyes watering?
Berry: Not because of him, but because of the love that's sustained me. I love and support women, and they support me. It makes me teary.
RD: In your new film, Perfect Stranger, you play a kind of tortured soul.
Berry: I play a reporter who goes undercover when a friend dies following an Internet affair with stranger. It's a classic whodunit, very Hitchcock.

RD: What is it like to work with Bruce Willis?
Berry: It's fun. Bruce ... brings a lot of spontaneity to a script, always trying to improve it. I got a lot out of working with him.

RD: Is there ever a downside to being beautiful in Hollywood?
Berry: Beauty is so subjective. It's been harder being a woman of colour trying to make it in an industry where there was no place for us. I've struggled with finding a place to be, and be comfortable, and for me that has nothing to do with beauty.

RD: What do you do when you're not working? Do you like to travel?
Berry: I've been working so much, the last thing I want to do when I'm off is travel some more. What I want to do is go home, be with my pets. I've got three cats and two dogs. I want to go where I feel safe, where I feel comfortable. And my mother is now in Los Angeles, so travelling has become less important.

RD: Let's talk about motherhood. You're interested?
Berry: Oh, yeah. I hope that happens. It's late; I've waited a little long. But I want to have children. Absolutely.
RD: So you're not pregnant, as the tabloids have suggested?
Berry: No, no, no. Trust me, when I'm pregnant &dnash;

RD: Everyone will know it?
Berry: There's nothing to hide.

RD: Would you consider adoption?
Berry: Oh, sure. Yeah.

RD: You're seeing someone new, but you've said many times, I'm never getting married again.
Berry: Never, that's true.

RD: You haven't learnt that you never say never?
Berry: This I'm 100% sure about. I will never – not in a traditional, formal way – ever.

RD: What's an example of a non-traditional way?
Berry: Being committed to someone (see image of Berry's boyfriend, Aubry) and professing my love and wanting to spend my life and build a family. But never with that dress on, signing that paper and legally being bound to another person.

RD: Is there anything else that you're looking forward to in the future?
Berry: I want to continue to be happy in myself, which I am, and give of myself in ways that feel meaningful for me. And the next chapter in my life, I think, will be about parenthood. Waking up and doing movies isn't quite enough anymore. The next act will be trying to be a good mother.