Halle Berry Opens Up About Not "Fitting in" Growing Up

Halle Berry may be an impossibly gorgeous Oscar-winning actress and former Miss USA and Miss World pageant queen. But that doesn't mean she's never wrestled with self doubt.

After telling Good Housekeeping a little bit about how she maintains her glowing skin (she uses the Flawless cleanse face scrubber to clean her face and then applies Vitamin C twice a day), the 54-year-old star opened up about the insecurities she faced as a teen growing up in the small town of Oakwood, Ohio in the late 1970s and early '80s.

"There weren't many women of color that were highlighted in pop culture that I could look to to identify myself with," the actress, who has a partnership with Flawless Beauty and Skin, shares. "So I went through my early preteen and adolescence, like, really struggling with my self worth and feeling confident."

She continues: "I was at an all-white high school [with] very few other Black kids. So, I felt inferior a lot. I felt like I didn't fit in. I didn't see images of beauty or even a lot of success around me with people that looked like me."

Thankfully, Halle says one teacher took notice of her identity issues and offered to help. This, along with therapy, provided Halle with a catalyst for coping with her emotions.

"I started to search out people of color that I could identify with, like Diahann Carroll and Diana Ross," she recalls. "Then Whitney Houston came along and I started to really seek out images of people that looked like me that I could model myself after and see successful women — especially women."

Thinking about raising her own 13-year-old daughter Nahla, Halle says she's "grateful" Nahla has someone like Zendaya to look up to in today's world.

"When I say to her, 'You know how lucky you are to have a role model like Zendaya?' And she says, 'Well, that's no big deal. Of course I have Zendaya,'" Halle explains.

As for advice she wishes to pass along to those dealing with their own confidence issues, Halle believes it's important to continue to look inward and to do things that help you stay connected to who you are. For Halle, that means focusing on being a good mother, friend and actress.

"We are all so much more than these beautiful bodies that we walk around in. Just work on the internal you and the things you can control," Halle declares. "We can't control how we come here and what we look like and what walk of life we're born into. But we can control what we think about things. We can control what we read. We can control what we put out, what we give, what we allow ourselves to take in."

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