“I live right up the street,” Halle Berry says to me. We’re in the lobby of a private, members-only club on bustling Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. She’s arrived five minutes early and without some hulking black SUV that will idle at the curb to whisk her away when this is over. Makeup-free, she looks approachable in roomy jeans paired with a sheer black tee under a baggy blazer.
The lack of pretense, I learn, is no front. Once we sit down, she orders lemon-ginger tea and launches into a topic most of us will only broach after a few glasses of wine: dry vaginas. “Look, it happens to more than 60 percent of women as we get older. Everything gets dry! If we talk about it and laugh about it, there’s no more shame or embarrassment.” It’s a topic Berry is passionate about — she founded a health platform focused on menopause care in 2020. “I’m almost 60,” she says. “Fighting for women’s health feels like a formidable cause for my second act.”
