>>49092761Berry was born Maria Halle Berry in Cleveland, Ohio, on August 14, 1966, the daughter of Judith Ann (née Hawkins), a white English immigrant from Liverpool, and Jerome Jesse Berry, an African-American man. Her name was legally changed to Halle Maria Berry at the age of five. Her parents selected her middle name from Halle's Department Store, which was then a local landmark in Cleveland. Berry's mother worked as a psychiatric nurse, and her father worked in the same hospital as an attendant in the psychiatric ward; he later became a bus driver. They divorced when Berry was four years old, and she and her older sister Heidi Berry-Henderson were raised exclusively by their mother. She has been estranged from her father since childhood, noting in 1992 that she did not even know if he was still alive. Her father was abusive to her mother, and Berry has recalled witnessing her mother being beaten daily, kicked down stairs, and hit in the head with a wine bottle.
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