Halle Berry looks flawless even with the harsh noon sun invading her hotel suite. At 40, she can play characters much younger. But genetic blessings and an Oscar in 2002 for Monster's Ball are not enough to help her feel secure in Hollywood.

Which might explain why her career is filled with ups and downs.

"If I sit around and wait for another Oscar-winning role, I'll probably sit myself out of a career. Because, what is an Oscar-winning role? Does anybody really know? You could get a great script, but then the movie doesn't come out like you expected."

And Berry just wants to keep working the way she did before the Oscar.

"I didn't try to win an Oscar when I did Monster's Ball. If I had had that burden hanging over my head I wouldn't have taken that role. Many people said 'This is going to end your career. This kind of nudity in this little movie -- why would you do it?' I did it for the love of the character."

As successful as she's been, Berry still seems afraid that the work is going to dry up.

"I never thought I would win an Oscar. I never set my sights that high. Being a woman of color, my goal was just to work in an industry that seemed to have no place for me. Twenty years ago the landscape was much different for someone like me."

Berry was the first black woman to nail a best-actress Oscar. She also has an Emmy, and a Golden Globe for the HBO film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, which she produced. But there was Gothika. And Catwoman. The critics tsk-tsked about Berry's bad choices.

And they won't have the greatest praise for her latest project, the thriller Perfect Stranger, which opened Friday and pits her against Bruce Willis in the convoluted story of a girl journalist who has to write under a male pseudonym to get respect for her hard-hitting scoops. (Huh? In this day and age?) After an old friend turns up in a medical examiner's drawer, she goes undercover as a temp in the offices of the guy with whom the dead woman had had an affair. And -- well, there's no easy way to explain the story. Suffice to say that there's lots more to Berry's character than meets the eye.

Halle really wants to know what you thought of Perfect Stranger. And you really want to be positive. So you tell her you were surprised by the end.

"Oh, good! That means we did our job."

Is she worried about how her films are received by critics?

"When people say they're not worried about that, they're lying. Of course you care what the critics think. They have a lot of power. They can deter an audience from coming to see a movie. [Perfect Stranger] was designed to be a crowd-pleaser. I hope the critics kind of get that. With Catwoman, they just didn't get the joke. Now people are seeing it and coming up to me and saying 'That wasn't nearly as bad as the critics said.' I hope they get this joke. I hope they keep in mind the genre and the idea that it's supposed to be an escape."

She has another couple of films coming in the next year, including Things We Lost in the Fire, co-staring Benicio del Toro. Berry plays a woman whose husband is killed by random violence. Del Toro is the man's best friend and a heroine addict. An unlikely relationship develops.

"I cannot think of a more boring career on the planet than to try to please the critics or try to win another Oscar. I'd rather eat my toes off one by one than approach my career that way. But people forget, this is how I make a living. I have to think about my future; I have to think about the family I'd like to have. A lot of the high-brow movies are indies that pay $2. Which is great. But you have to have balance. You have to make the movies that pay, too. Catwoman allowed me to do Things We Lost in the Fire."

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