Berry will co-star with Pierce Brosnan in the new James Bond movie

Despite critical praise, it is only in the last two years that she has become one of Hollywood's star names.

In 2000's hit science fiction film X-Men, she played Storm, a mutant who has the ability to control the weather.

The following year she co-starred with John Travolta in the thriller Swordfish.

Beauty pageant

Berry was born on 14 August, 1968 in Cleveland, Ohio, the daughter of a black father and white mother.

As a teenager she had success on the beauty pageant circuit and after a spell as a model, started appearing in a weekly TV series, Living Dolls.

After working with Lee she partnered comic actor Eddie Murphy in 1992's Boomerang, and a couple of years appeared as the dishy secretary Sharon Stone in The Flintstones.

Swordfish topped the US box office

In Bulworth, a satire on US racial politics, she was praised for her role when she starred as a street smart young woman who takes up Warren Beatty's struggling politician.

Greater acclaim followed in 1999, when she portrayed the doomed black American actress Dorothy Dandridge in a made-for-cable TV film. The role won her a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award.

Early in 2000, the year of her hit with X-Men, she suffered a personal setback when a Beverley Hills court put her on probation for three years and fined her $13,500 (�8,500) for leaving the scene of an accident.

Berry has now proved herself across genres like comedy, action films and serious drama.

And now, she has become the first African-American woman to win the best actress Oscar for Monster's Ball.