Halle Berry has revealed she’s her “best self” since she reached her mid-50s.
The 56-year-old actress discussed her experience of menopause in a new interview with Women’s Health magazine. Halle insisted she felt happier than ever and urged other women to challenge stereotypes about ageing.
“The most important thing about owning your sexuality as a woman is accepting the station you’re at - and embracing that,” the Monster's Ball star shared.
“And I say that because I’m smack dab in the middle of menopause. And I am challenging everything I thought I knew about menopause. Things like: ‘Your life is over.’ ‘You are disposable.’ ‘Society no longer has a place for you.’ ‘You should retire.’
“I’m challenging all those stereotypes about how you have to look a certain way or feel a certain way. I’m my best self now that I reached 56 years old.”
Halle revealed she no longer cared what other people think and isn’t afraid to express her true thoughts and feelings.
“I have the most to offer. I have zero blanks to give anymore,” she added. “I’m solidly in my womanhood. I finally realise what I have to say is valuable, even if no one else agrees.”
In the empowering interview Halle also urged women in their mid-thirties to avoid getting hung up on having children by a “certain age”.
The star has two children - 15-year-old daughter Nahla with ex-Gabriel Aubry and nine-year-old son Maceo-Robert with ex-husband Olivier Martinez - and encouraged fellow mums not to feel “defined” by dated expectations surrounding parenting.
“If you want to have children, you don’t have to be defined by those old ideologies that this is what women ‘have’ to do,” she said.
“Do it only if you want to, because you give up a lot of your personal life to growing those other lives. And maybe you’re not a woman who wants to do that. No harm, no foul, no judgment.
“Be clear about who you are and how you wanna live your life because it’s yours and yours alone to live.”
