If she's glad about the Oscar, it's because it allows her to vie for projects like Fire.

"The Oscar affords me the right to have my manager call and say, 'I know that wasn't written for a woman of color, and I know she's probably the last person on your mind, but she would like to meet with the filmmakers.' At least I can get in the room now and make a case."

Starting to film in the next few months is Nappily Ever After, for which Berry will will go bald.

"The movie deals with the issues of hair and women. We define ourselves by our hair. My character is always at the beauty salon in an endless pursuit to make her hair shiny and straight and long. But something goes wrong with the products they put in her hair and she decides to shave it all off. Which means I will be shaving it all off. I have hair issues myself. So I kind of need to go bald to get to another level of self-love and self-acceptance."

These days, Berry's hair is straight and long. Soon, it'll be back to her trademark super short.

"My hair is very curly. It's a lot of work to keep it like this. Which is why I had it so short for so long. Women all think their hair is their power. I guess I'm about to find out that maybe it's really not," she says in her suite at the Mandarin Oriental off Brickell Avenue, looking Halle-perfect in a halter-top purple dress that shows off her dedication to the gym. The night before, she ventured to South Beach. But she packed it in after dinner at Lario's on the Beach, she said.

"Miami is like -- danger, danger! Too many good-looking people here," says the woman who had two famously failed marriages and now dates Canadian model Gabriel Aubry. "I thought, 'Ooh, I need to go back to my room.' "

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