Halle Berry for Re-spin.Photo: Re-spin
Halle Berry’s health and fitness hasn’t taken a backseat in working motherhood, but shehashad to adjust to make time for it all.
In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, the actress and entrepreneur opens up about her health-and-wellness platformre-spin, plus how she makes her mental and physical well-being a priority while juggling work and being a mother of two — all during a pandemic.
“I’ve made it my mission to find time in the day to exercise, get work done and be a mom,” says Berry, 54, who has a 7-year-old son namedMaceo-Robertand daughterNahla Ariela, 12. “I think duringCOVID, it’s been easy to forget the time in our day to be active because we just can’t do the things that we used to do and it’s hard to find ways to do that at home.”
“I created the Journal on Joy as one of the tools to help remind people of what brings them joy,” Berry tells PEOPLE. “The Journal on Joy guides you through setting intentions, finding affirmations and manifesting your life.”
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Halle Berry for Re-spin.Re-spin
She adds, “Discovering new, creative ways to stay active to feel inspired and energized while also making it fun when things feel mundane and monotonous has been key for my mental and physical health.”
Berry says that “the most important agenda” she has these days is “being well and physically fit and healthy” — but reveals that how shemaintains that priority of wellness"has taken on a new meaning as I’ve become a mom in my 40s."
“I have to work at it every day,” she explains. “I have to think about what I put in my body via food, how I exercise and all the ways I can work hard that will allow me to be here through as many phases of the lives of my children as I can.”
Berry is set to make her directorial debut withBruised, in which she also stars. And she tells PEOPLE that her training for the upcomingNetflixsports drama (on whose setshe was injured back in 2019) “was nothing like I’ve ever experienced in my whole career.”
“Learning all the things I had to do for this film on top of the hours and hours spent fighting and training to prepare for this movie was, hands down, the hardest thing I’ve had to do,” she says. “I did jiu-jitsu, shadowboxed,skipped rope with our speedand weighted ropes, sprawling, capoeira, you name it — five days a week, for 60 to 90 minutes at a time.”
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“Not only was I training physically, but it was also my directorial debut,” she says. “I was pretty much working 20 hours a day between all the things I had to do.”
Berry tells PEOPLE shewas inspired to launch re-spinafter the success of her digital fan-focused platformHallewoodin the early 2000s (and subsequent 2016 re-launch), in an effort to “do something more substantial and significant this time around” and give her “a voice that mattered that lived outside of my work as an actor.”
To that end, theDie Another Dayactress strived to build an online community “that could help all people across the board and that could address the needs of people who were interested in health, wellness, fitness, giving back, learning, growing and pivoting, and who were committed to living a mindful life and their best life.”
She explains that she wanted the platform “to be a hug” for people to “have a conversation” and share ideas: “We’re like-minded people who care about free thinking.”
“I can talk about my journey, but I also created the environment to learn about everyone else’s journey and see how we are very much alike, andstop focusing on our differences,” she says.
source: people.com
