Halle Berry shared 1-bedroom apartment with '15 other girls'

"I had this idea of what it was gonna be and then I realized, 'Oh!'"

Before the fame and Oscar acclaim, Halle Berry was one of 15 girls sleeping on bean bag chairs in a crowded one-bedroom apartment.

During a visit to Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, the Never Let Go star opened up about the origins of her career, when she made the leap from beauty pageant circuit to professional modeling. The change was sparked by the organizer of an Ohio pageant, who encouraged her to move out to Illinois and join their modeling agency.

"She said, ‘Come to Chicago, I’ll hook you up with modeling and [you’ll] make a bag of cash, just relax for a year and then figure out what you’re gonna do,’” Berry recalled. “I said ‘Okay.’”

Unfortunately, reality was much less picturesque. Or, as Berry put it, "a big bunch of crap."

Disney/Randy Holmes

She explained, “She never told me it would be in a one bedroom apartment with like 15 other girls sleeping on the floor in bean bags. I had this idea of what it was gonna be and then I realized, “Oh!’”

Shepard, whose long-running interview podcast often begins by asking guests to recall their rise to fame, pointed out that Berry’s origins are very much part of a trend.

“We've heard this story a few times,” he shared. “People relocate, and there's a manager, there's an agent, and they get there, and they're like, ‘Oh, wow, I guess we’re all living here.’”

Berry quipped, "'I guess we’re all living together [with] one bathroom.'"

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After six months in the cramped apartment, Berry was ready for a change, "I pulled one of the girls aside and said, ‘Let’s go get our own place.’”

While living with a roommate, Berry took her first step into the world of acting — a transition that came about almost entirely by accident.

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“My foray into acting was that I went to Second City,” the actress said, explaining that she took a few classes with the world-famous comedy troupe that has marked the starting point for such comedy luminaries as Bill Murray, Steve Carrell, John Belushi, Jordan Peele, and Tina Fey. But in Berry's case, it was initially just a way to pass the time.

"I was bored,” she added. “It wasn’t because I thought I’d have a career as an actor, I just wanted something to do in the evenings, and I also heard that some funny, good looking guys went there.”

Before long, Berry booked her acting debut in Living Dolls, ABC’s Who’s The Boss spinoff. Though it lasted only a single season, it’s where the actress got her start before landing a breakthrough role in Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever.

Her career would continue on an upwards trajectory with roles in the 1991 comedy Strictly Business, the Eddie Murphy romcom Boomerang , and the live action adaptation of The Flinstones, before earning acclaim for he role as Dorothy Dandridge in the 1999 HBO biopic, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. The film earned Berry an Emmy award, a Golden Globe, and her first Academy Award nomination. Two years later, she should win Best Actress at the 74th Academy Award for Monster’s Ball, becoming the only Black woman to score the award, to this day.

You can hear Berry retrace the steps of her fame on Armchair Expert above.