“Honestly, I felt the sexiest during both my pregnancies,” Halle Berry, 52, said in an interview with InStyle. Halle gave birth to her daughter Nahla, 11, in 2008 and her son Maceo, 5, in 2013, and in the intimate chat, she revealed she wished she hadn’t had waited to get knocked up. “Around the time of my third InStyle cover, in 2007, I became a mom at 40. Knowing that someone would always be counting on me made me a better person. I’m more focused and in line with my values and my goals. I stopped letting negativity get me down. Plus, I loved being pregnant. Had I started earlier, I probably would have had five children. Or if I hadn’t been busy trying to make movies, I would have been the perfect surrogate.
“All the hormones made me feel amazing. I was so alive with my purpose and my femininity. It felt like my body was doing what it was built to do,” she added. Halle also revealed that her kids are starting to now get an idea that she’s a famous movie star, but that ultimately, “being a mom is the best job…the only thing I want at the end of the day is for my children to say, ‘You weren’t perfect, you didn’t do everything right, but you were a good mom.’”
“I spent almost 10 years being in mom mode,” the John Wick 3 star said. “Now that my youngest is starting kindergarten, I feel like I can get back into my life, and that’s important. I want to keep challenging myself and proving that I can still follow my passions, take risks, and take on characters who make me feel alive. But I prove that to myself, not to anyone else. I think that’s what keeps us young. It keeps me connected to my children because I’m alive in the world. One day they’re going to grow up, and I don’t want to be the mom who’s crying because her kids left. I want to be the mom who says, ‘Yes, girl, go fly. Go do you, do your life.’ “
Halle met Nahla’s father, model Gabriel Aubrey, 42, while doing a fashion shoot for Versace in 2005. The couple connected instantly and welcomed their daughter – the first child for both of them – in 2008. By 2010, they had broken up, and Halle went on to fall in love with actor Olivier Martinez, 53. They were wed in 2013 and welcomed their son that year. Two years later, in 2015, they called it quits.
In recent months, Halle has been seen out in public with her kids more and more. The ordinarily private mother was spotted walking with Nahla in West Hollywood on June 1. A month later, Halle and her two kids were seen shopping at a Michael’s crafts store in Los Angeles.