Halle Berry’s new movie, Kidnap, opens this week. I like Halle well enough but I won’t go see this film. I feel bad saying that because I want to support women-led films but I’m a wuss and get so upset by the trailer that I can’t even entertain going to see it. The plot, succinctly, is that Halle’s character, Karla, goes to a playground with her son. She notices he’s missing and then witnesses him being dragged into the car. She loses her phone and spends the rest of the movie chasing the car with no assistance or anything other than her fear and anger. That’s my take, I’m sure it’s more layered than that but I don’t want to think about me and mine in that position. I hope it’s successful, maybe I’ll buy a ticket and just not go in the theater.
Anyway, Halle recently did an interview with her costar, Sage Correa, who plays her son in the film. The two got on very well and their chemistry comes across in interviews so I can imagine that it’s in the film as well. Sage is the same age at Halle’s daughter, Nahla. Halle, as most of you know, has already fought hard for her children’s safety. Halle was joined by Jennifer Garner to get the anti-paparazzi bill passed in 2013. The bill imposed stricter penalties for anyone who “seriously alarms, annoys, torments or terrorizes a child.” While speaking to Extra during her Kidnap promotion, Halle echoed the testimony she gave while trying to get the bill passed about how the paparazzi were so eager to get a sellable photo of her child that they would shout cruel things at Nahla just to get a reaction. It got so bad for the then-five-year old Nahla, she couldn’t leave the house.
As for how becoming a mother has changed her, Halle explained, “Oh, being a mom, I learned how strong I really am. I always thought I was a pretty strong person, but now being a mother, the things I’ve been able to fight for for my children have really made me understand how strong I am and how much power I have, actually… as not only a mother, but just as a woman, I’ll always stand up for them.”
Standing up for her kids and working to change paparazzi laws after her daughter was born, Berry commented, “Nahla couldn’t leave the house. She couldn’t go to school. She was terrified. So not changing the law was not an option. I had to change the law. I had to change the law, and so when you have that will and that desire… you’d be surprised what you can actually do just like our girl Karla… she had to get her son back.”
I’m not pretending that Halle has handled herself perfectly in every situation but I do think she acted in her children’s best interest when she fought for this bill. Even Jennifer said that this was Halle’s idea and that she followed Halle’s lead. Regardless of her actions during her custody battle, her child should not be tormented by outsiders looking to profit. Nahla was five years old, there was already so much she didn’t understand. Shouting alone would scare her but to have such vile things yelled at her? Of course she was terrified. And all to get a shot. I’m glad Halle took the action she needed to to protect her kids and I’m glad that neither her daughter or son have to endure that torment anymore.
But I still can’t go see this film.
Photo credit: Getty Images and Pacific Coast News
Agreed. In this case she was right. Didn’t they also scale the wall to her house to get a shot of her kid? Scary.
Does anyone else see a strong resemblance to Kristen Wiig? Along with that, the longer hair in many ways seems to make her face more relatable. That short cut does something for her that long hair does not.
That said, i agree with people who see her as unsympathetic. I think it stems back to the hit and run. There’s a hint of instability there with regards to her choices, and people usually wind up thinking, sheesh- get it together.
The pap law was good. I saw a clip first hand where Hallie was screaming at them to get back and frankly, i think a lot of how a child reacts depends on Mom and Dad. If Mom is angry, crying and distraught the kid will be that x3.
I recall thinking, geez Hallie attempt to be cool if for no other reason than your kids sake.
Here’s where some may disagree with me. I think Hallie to a large extent created her own papz/child drama. Did paps want pics of her and Gabriel Aubrey’s kid? Sure – but the cloak and dagger that Hallie was carrying on, with blankets and hiding the kid under this and that, seemed designed to create a frenzy and hunt that wasn’t there organically. Berry and Aubrey were not Brangelina, they weren’t even Gaffleck.
I always thought had she stepped out like a normal person and let them have a shot, or done a spread somewhere, it would’ve taken that edge off.
This film sounds like a Lifetime movie. Halle is a talented actress and I wish she had more to do. Extant would have been cool if it worked out.
I personally find Halle incredibly unsympathetic. I know I know, you say the issue with her custody battle is different to her kids being tormented by paparazzi (which obviously no kid should have to deal with) – but I really can’t help but think that she behaves terribly and creates negative situations in her kids lives, herself. There is no reason to have a violently acrimonious relationship with your ex, unless he is abusive (which I don’t believe he was? Correct me if I’m wrong – but my understanding is the drama was over money/her new partner and old partner not getting along)). There is no reason for your current lover to be punching your daughter’s father on the doorstep….that stuff SHE could have protected Nahla from, and she didn’t.
I mean, let be honest, I think the aggression and violence that went on between her parents probably impacted Nahla more than the paparazzi shouting her name. That is something her parents could have protected her from…I struggle to set that aside when talking about this, I’m afraid.
Same for Jennifer Garners kids – and I’m not defending the paparazzi – but my guess is daddy doing pap walks with his newest and mommy and daddy going at it in the press probably impacts them more than the paparazzi.
OFCOURSE kids should be protected, but its a bit rich coming from Halle/Jennifer etc
Then you truly do not or choose not to understand how the media operates. And although I cringe at Jennifer’s pap strulls with her kids at least she is controlling the narrative. Letting them snap her kids from a safe distance is better than them jumping out of bushes or tailing their family vehicle. The more sanctioned photos there are the less valuable the pics become and therefore less of a pap frenzy ensues.
Jennifer Garner does not do pap strolls with her children. She picks them up from school and out of necessity, they have to use the sidewalk to walk on to get to their vehicle or otherwise. There is nothing to cringe at.
I agree with Sabrine; she literally picks them up from school everyday (which I think I know which one it is but I won’t say) at the same time so obviously they know she’ll be there. I’m just surprised there is so much interests in the Affleck children.
To and from school only? If you choose to ignore the karate/dance/farmer’s market/church etc cozy strolls then that is on you. Garner is no innocent when it comes to PR.
@Enough Already
I don’t care one way or another if someone calls photographers but really – regular people have monotonous, routine lives. Kid 1 goes to karate on Wednesday, kid 2 has swimming Thurs + Fri, family does church on Sunday. You can’t say they’re begging to be photographed every time they leave their house following their regular routine! If she took the kids to 1OAK or Chateau Marmont then yeah, I’d say she was asking for it!
Yes. Absolutely agree.
And, to take your point further, I think that on some level she knows that what you say is true, so she has a tremendous psychological need to recast herself as the quintessential maternal figure, an unrelenting warrior, protecting her child against a monstrously evil foe.
More cynically, she’s rebranding herself.
This is exactly what I came here to say.
Nothing to add, just 100% agree with you.
I get what you’re saying, but I don’t agree. I think no child should have photographers screaming insults and worse at them to get a photograph no matter what goes on at home. Whether they are damaged more by their home life or the photographers is not the issue here. I can’t believe grown men will do that to little children!!
Yes, this is how I feel as well. All parents fail in some areas for a myriad of reasons but that doesn’t mean that they don’t care about their children. It is important, faults and all, to be the best parent that you can be even moving forward from, sometimes avoidable, mistakes.
I can’t fault Berry or Garner for their action. It moved my admiration for them both up a notch. No HW parent before them took this action and surely many should have.
Off topic, Halle is incredibly beautiful.
Yes, every day I fail my kids. Unfortunately some of those fails won’t be known until later in their lives, when I might not be around to correct them.
Being a parent is tricky for sure.
But some, you kinda know when you are doing them. Yelling, for example, you know is not the best method of communicating. Trying to keep the father of your child off the BC, that’s another you kinda know might have a powerful negative impact on the kid? Moving them to France, another one.
These aren’t small things.
Which is why, while I do think the law was needed, I side eye and roll eye Halle trying to convince us that she is a pagan of motherhood.
I didn’t even get to mention the whole “2nd father of child beats up first father on child in from of the first child’s home”
The messenger matters.
Paparazzi should not be yelling any abuse or inappropriate things to children, when they call little girls ‘b*tches’ or tell them to smile etc, that’s vile and unnecessary. Or when they shout personal details about the adults, no child should hear about their parents’ divorce from strangers in public. You can traumatize kids! They can do their job without all that and I imagine it’s very hard for celebs to find that balance with giving paps what they want without compromising their children’s privacy and well-being because if you don’t cooperate they do dangerous things (scale walls and breach security, drive dangerously etc).
That said, it’s rich coming from this woman who in 2012 most definitely set up pap shots with Nahla being fathered by Martinez when she was trying to alienate the girl from the bio dad Aubry. As for Garner, it was pretty stupid for them to advocate this law when one moment Affleck was kicking the paparazzi for disturbing them during a day out with the kids and as soon as the Oscar campaign kicked in, he was smiling and semi-posing with his children. If you want a good relationship with the paps, at least be consistent.
It’s possible to build a relationship with 1 agency and tip them off as some celebs clearly are only papped by 1 agency. That way other agencies will always have to take the crumbs and have less valuable pics. Or like Brangelina used to do when work called: arrange some pap shots once in a while, deliver good magazine interviews and always being nice and then disappear in peace and quiet for months on end. Or some A-list celebs are rarely papped (J-law), we don’t even know the kids’ names. Julia Roberts is like nowhere to be seen and she’s still considered huge. Madonna and other popstars are not that often papped unless they want to. There are ways to go about it I think but celebs won’t admit any of it so the staunch anti-paps brigade have the last word.
@Clare
I have my own issues with Halle but there is a time and place for everything i find your comment mainly off topic and insensitive. Say what you will about Halle but paparazzi behaviors especially around kids is out of control . FRom calling Suri Cruise names and saying her dad doesn’t want her, asking Nahla if its true that she wont see her dad again ? just to get a reaction who does that to a child ? in fact the very 1st pic of Nahla was from a pap who scaled the fence of her home !
There seems to be a narrative on this site that everyone calls the paps everytime which may be true sometimes but not in all cases.i have family in LA and when I go through LAX there are paps hoping to see celebs, some of them pay insiders i.e airline staff to disclose who is on flight manifest,etc
Also kids tend to have a routines . how hard is it to pap a kid that has to go to X school by y time and they know where you live.? People used to make the same claim as Jen Garner
with Sarah Jessica Parker, are they to enroll their kids in a different school everyday and show up at different times each day when classes start at 8 am ?
Even the fairly private Ryan Gosling /Eva Mendez kids are being papped now as you cant keep kids cooped up in a house forever
Yes calling paps may be thing but not everybody does it plus paps have their own ways and mean of getting celeb info and in any event no one should hound kids they way i have seen some do. Sometime we let our dislike/envy of celebs cloud things
I agree with you Clare.
My issue isn’t with the law or that children should be protected. Of course they should. There is no reason to allow strangers to publish photos of children. It’s pretty disgusting.
Having said that, children should also be protected from their parents if need be. This law didn’t go far enough because it still allows these two mothers (and many others) to trot out their kids when it suits them. And they have done that, let’s not be naive. Yes, good for the kids that the paparazzi aren’t allowed to scare them anymore, but can we all agree that the hypocrisy here is almost suffocating? There are plenty of celebs whose kids faces I couldn’t pick out of a lineup. And I doubt they live like hermits.
There was a lot of interest in Nahla when she was born. If a child is frightened by paps then why not cover them. Aggressive paps can give off a vibe that would scare a child. They are not
the most refined group of people.
There were reports paps were yelling racial slurs at Nahla that were ugly. They have done it to the Pitt-Jolie kids. Lenny Kravitz complained about that too. They have been known to be verbally abusive if a celeb won’t let them get more photos. It is one of the reasons a few good pap strolls help to bring down the sale price of the pictures so that a mob of them aren’t hiding in the bushes trying to get that 6 figure shot.
I saw Kidnap this weekend and I enjoyed it. I expected a boiler plate helpless mummy flick with a predictable plot line but it really wasn’t. She isn’t suddenly transformed into a ninja which is also annoying but she isn’t making dumb choices that the audience can’t connect with either. Plus I loved how she played the panic because you see it but it isnt paralysing her. My only criticism is that the scenes to establish her relationship with her kid are too saccharine but that’s standard for these films, see also Taken. Go see this if you can.
“Taken” is one of my favorite thrillers ever (too bad Taken 2 and 3 are embarrassingly awful).
I will give it a go to “Kidnap”.
I really want to watch it.
Sage is Chick Correa’s 3rd gen Scientology offspring, right? So sad. Is all the money he made from this gòing to a new ideal org?
I agree to a certain extend, but it is a case of having your cake and eating it. You either constantly protect your kids and keep them away from the spot light, which a LOT of celebrities are capable of, including the Brange kids, that often disappear from the press for months on end and it does not get more famous than that. But Jennifer Garner especially obviously uses her kids for publicity and to consolidate her image as Best Mom in the world. All the Farmer’s market visits, drop off at school and soccer plays….GTFOOH.
ITA
The Brange kids are one of the most famous children in the world, they all got a spread worth millions of dollars and we know personal details about them from both Jolie and Pitt. There is not a single interview where the kids aren’t mentioned and they’re even working on her latest film now + had a bit part in Maleficent. And now they even met the journalist from VF, something Jolie said in the past she didn’t allow due to the relationship (journalist wanting something juicy to write about).
The parents just employ different ways to make you buy their family image but all celebs do it, especially Brangelina. Most celebs just set up pap shots more regularly but Brangelina offered more private details and magazine content.
Truth. I’m surprised that people are mentioning the Brange kids as removed from this stuff. We just got an update about them from their own mother in a promotional magazine interview. There are those celebd who never ever use their kids to self market but they are few and far between.
Different famous parents use different strategies to manage public interest in their kids. I actually dislike Halle Berry but can recognize that while I may not like the way she handled her ex, that does not give the paparazzi to abuse her child to get a picture.
Jennifer Garner uses her kids for publicity because she does normal stuff like pick them up from school and takes them to the grocery but Angelina who puts them in Vogue, VF, and W magazine and were excessively photographed before the public got burnt out doesn’t use them for publicity. That’s interesting.
I heard this movie was fantastic and I want to see it because Halle Berry is one of the best actresses out there period. I’ve never seen a movie with her where she didn’t bring it. I know she won an oscar, but I don’t feel she gets the roles or respect of an oscar winner.
That’s probably true about Halle’s post Oscar work. I don’t think that she is alone in that category though. Many actors win an Oscar and after that their film careers stall or even decline like Mira Sorvino, Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear, and Cuba Gooding, Jr. I don’t know how much of that is lack of opportunity versus not choosing material wisely. It would be interesting to study.
Halle is a stunningly beautiful woman who has a presence and vulnerability on screen that some people connect to .she is at her best when playing “herself “i.e Dorothy Dandridge etc
Other than that ,IMO she is far from the ” best ” actress ” out there LOL, she is mediocre actress with limited range at most and no gravitas and she can be downright terrible at times. Im sorry but i cant sit through that one pained expression she has and call it acting Halle sad, Halle angry. Halle pensive the SAME darned pained look ..Nope
I still think that Sissy Spacek was totally robbed of that Oscar , but to be fair, Halle is not the only person who got an Oscar they didn’t quite deserve or mediocre actress out there working so theres that
I’m so glad someone mentioned Sissy Spacek. Every time I’m reminded that Halle Berry won, I can’t help thinking that statuette should sit on Spacek’s mantelpiece.
Sissy Spacek is everything. Coalminer’s Daughter is still one my favourites.
I can’t believe this movie is just coming out it must have been out in Europe somewhere as I saw it online a couple of months ago. It was ok I don’t know if I’d fork over £10 but was entertaining.
Halle is a good actress. I wouldn’t agree that she’s one of the best. I still remember her accent work as Storm in X-Men.
Marco! Polo!
…sorry, couldn’t resist.
The movie looks interesting enough. I didn’t know that she and Jenn Gardner helped to get a law passed to protect children from overzealous paparazzi. Well done! I do remember those times when the paps did seem to go after pics of her with Nahla, Jenn and her kids and Brittany Spears with her young boys at the time.
Good for her but I’m curious as to how this bill works. I still see plenty of pap shots of kids leaving airports, restaurants, parks, beaches, etc. There are some celebrity kids that we see all the time and others we rarely see at all.
Just watched her in an old movie “Perfect Stranger”. She is so beautiful and great figure. I think she’s a good actress as well.
Most celebs aren’t nearly the draw they think they are. Some but not at all of them, do call the paps and intentionally pap hot spots so they can be seen and papped.
Angelina Jolie is actually a good example, with the exception of a few unauthorized pics most of the pics of her children are basically shot by a professional photographer. By and large, her and Brad Pitt were able to navigate their lives without their kids being constantly papped. If she can do it, I’m guessing anyone can.
I never realized that Halle or pics of her kids were such gets. Maybe during the nasty custody dispute with Gabriel Aubry but beyond that, were the masses really clamoring for pics of her and her kids?
‘ By and large, her and Brad Pitt were able to navigate their lives without their kids being constantly papped.’
I have to strongly disagree; there are thousands of pap photos of the JP kids all over the world. Some are long-range, some are from balconies, on boats in the middle of the ocean, leaving museums, hospitals; you name it and there is a JP kid pap photo of it. Almost their entire lives have been documented by the paps and I don’t believe all of it was a professional photographer. TMZ and People have admitted that she has set up pap shots and there are dozens upon dozens of airport pap photos. Not sure how Angelina is a good example of her kids not being constantly papped.
I agree that laws need to be in place to protect children from the paps.
(I think this woman is never going to stop being gorgeous. Even when she’s 80 she’ll be a stunner. )