Ever knew Halle Berry was Miss Ohio, Miss USA runner-up and first Black USA Miss World entrant?

You know 53-year-old Halle Berry as an academy award-winning actress. The only woman of African-American descent and the only woman of color to have won the Oscar for best actress. However, there was a time Berry was active on the beauty pageant circuit.  

In the 1980s, Berry won the Miss Teen Ohio Pageant at just 18, and later that year was named Miss Teen All-American, according to People.com. “In 1986, she won the Miss Ohio title before coming in first runner-up at the Miss USA pageant. She then featured in the 1986 Miss World competition, where she was the first Black woman to ever represent the USA in the pageant placing sixth.”

Berry was one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood during the 2000s, and has been involved in the production of several of the films in which she performed. She has romantically been involved with baseball player David Justice, singer-songwriter Eric Benét, Gabriel Aubry and actor Olivier Martinez.

Berry was born to Judith Ann (née Hawkins), a white English nurse and father Jerome Jesse Berry, an African-American hospital attendant. The couple divorced when she was four.

Berry grew up in Oakwood, Ohio and graduated from Bedford High School where she was a cheerleader, honor student, editor of the school newspaper and prom queen. She studied at Cuyahoga Community College.

Berry was ranked No. 1 on People’s “50 Most Beautiful People in the World” list in 2003 after making the top 10 seven times and appeared No. 1 on FHM’s “100 Sexiest Women in the World” the same year. She was named Esquire magazine’s “Sexiest Woman Alive” in October 2008.