Halle Berry wants more Black women recognized by the Academy, full stop.

“Being born a Black woman, I feel like I have always felt like I sat at the bottom of society,” she said on a recent appearance on Trevor Noah‘s What Now? podcast. “White man, Black man, white woman, Black woman. So I’ve always felt at the bottom, never feeling like I was defeated because I was at the bottom, never feeling like I couldn’t dream big because I was at the bottom, never feeling like I wasn’t worthy or capable because I was at the bottom. But I always have known that I’m going to have to work 10 times harder than everybody else to get anywhere.”

Berry’s tireless work and undeniable talent led to her being the first Black woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2002. But she’s sick of remaining the only Black woman at the top. “I hope this year someone stands next to me. I hope it happens because I’m tired of occupying that space alone,” she said.

Berry got her start in modeling in the 1980s, going on to represent Ohio and place second in the 1986 Miss USA pageant. Her first film was also her first big break, in Spike Lee‘s provocative 1991 romantic satire Jungle Fever. She had already worked with acclaimed directors like Lee, Warren Beatty, and Martha Coolidge, and won a Primetime Emmy for her titular performance in Introducing Dorothy Dandridge by the time Oscar came calling.

“This moment is so much bigger than me,” Berry said on stage after winning the award for her performance in the 2002, Lee Daniels-produced romantic drama Monster’s Ball. Even then, she understood the context that led to her historic achievement, and all the work that lay ahead. “This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll. It’s for the women that stand beside me, Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett, Vivica A. Fox. And it’s for every nameless, faceless woman of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened,” she reflected.

Berry told Noah that she believes she was “chosen” to win the Oscar, “to open that door. I knew it was bigger than me. Right? But even if it’s not, I was chosen in that moment to be a beacon of possibility. And I do think it served that purpose.”

Since Berry’s win, a total of six Black women have been nominated eight times for the same award, including Andra Day, Gaborney Sibide, Quvenzhané Wallis, Ruth Negga, Viola Davis (nominated twice), and Cynthia Erivo (also twice). In the 96 years the Academy has been presenting the Best Actress prize, only one other woman of color has won – Michelle Yeoh for Everything Everywhere All At Once, in 2022.

This year, Cynthia Erivo is a Best Actress nominee for her performance as Elphaba Thropp in the big screen adaptation of Broadway’s Wicked. She was previously nominated in 2019 for her performance as Harriet Tubman in the biopic Harriet. Erivo is joined in the category by the Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres and the Spanish actress Karla Sofía Gascón, who has ceased campaigning for the award in light of a deluge of resurfaced social media posts that exhibit extreme racist and Islamophobic views.

Gascón’s costar, Zoe Saldaña, is nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

You can watch the rest of Berry’s interview with Noah and co-host Christiana Mbakwe Medina below.