A night of great intimacy was followed by a painful morning in which Academy Award–winning actress Halle Berry felt like she was being attacked by razor blades. She took a trip to the doctor, who told her she had “the worst case of herpes he had ever seen,” Berry recalled.
Turns out Berry, 54, was suffering the incredibly common symptoms of menopause after she had been in perimenopause—the transitional phase of a woman’s life that leads to the end of her cycle—for about 10 years and didn’t know it.
“I’m in menopause,” Berry declared during a live interview with Fortune’s Michal Lev-Ram at the Most Powerful Women Summit in Laguna Niguel, Calif., on Tuesday. “How liberating is that?”
Berry is well-known for her starring roles in the romantic comedy Boomerang and the biopic Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, which earned her an Emmy and Golden Globe award. She is also the first and only Black actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress for her haunting role in Monster’s Ball in 2001. Fast-forward to her doctor’s appointment and misdiagnosis; it was likely a relief to find out she was in the throes of menopause and not something more harmful to her health. But Berry realized the gravity of the issue: Millions of women grapple to find productive information about their symptoms and potential treatments while they’re experiencing menopause. Not to mention, there’s a stigma surrounding the issue of actually explaining a hot flash, the sudden exhilarating rage common in menopause, or brain fog, lest it backfire and make a woman in her fifties or older appear less capable at work or home.
That realization sent Berry on a voyage not only to raise money in Silicon Valley to launch a community platform with her new midlife women’s wellness business, Respin, but also to rally the halls of Congress to support a bill aimed at directing $275 million for research on effective therapies and medicines. The bill, the Advancing Menopause Care and Mid-Life Women’s Health Act, has support from a bipartisan coalition of women in the U.S. Senate, led by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).
It was at a press briefing in front of the Capitol Building that Berry first unleashed her “I have menopause, okay!” rallying cry last spring. She has since won the backing of 18 of 25 senators; her goal is to get all of them over the line to support the stand-alone funding bill. Some of the legislators she’s spoken with oppose additional medical funding in favor of redirecting existing funding into menopause research. Still, she’s determined to keep advancing the issue.
And even in an election year, Berry said, the matter of menopause is one that shouldn’t be politicized.
“This is a human rights issue,” said Berry. Women are worthy of doctors who won’t tell patients they have herpes when they don’t, she added.
“We deserve more.”
