Halle Berry is embracing freedom when it comes to her body. In fact, the 56-year-old John Wick: Chapter 3 megastar shared a photo doing so while standing naked on her balcony and sipping out of a wine glass.
"I do what I wanna do," Berry captioned the photo. "Happy Saturday."
The Oscar-winning actress casually dropped one of the most talked about photos of the year and didn't even think twice about it, ultimately cementing what we all know: that she is living her best, soft life off the radar, and being unapologetic about it--something we wish for all Black women.
And even when hit by trolls and criticism from the photo, instead of letting the comment rile her up, Berry responded with a fun fact in a now-deleted tweet: "Did you guys know the heart of a shrimp is located in its head?"
Her social media approved, saying:
Ms. Berry I see you're on 10 today...and I APPROVE. 😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/c9dKo5zIKZ
— Anastasia Beaverhausen (@river_midnite) April 10, 2023
The best part? She honestly isn't new to casually dropping internet-breaking nude-ish pics. In fact, she shared another on her Instagram a few weeks ago.
Halle Berry on Instagram: "hump day self love 🤍"
And did the same back in 2021:
Halle Berry on Instagram: "vacay drip… ☀️"
Up until now, Berry moved at hyper-speed in pursuit of her next love. And now for the first time, she is living at her pace, no matter who doesn't like it. She told Prevention last year, “In my 30s, I was so focused on career, but I had a desire to have children and be a mother. So I felt I was lacking something,” she explained. “In my 40s, I took the decade to be at home and have children and be a mom. But my career was lacking—I longed to be back at work.” (Berry has two children—Nahla, with ex-boyfriend model Gabriel Aubry, and Maceo, with her ex-husband actor Olivier Martinez.)
Then, after a group meditation in India in 2017, she saw a shift. “The shaman told me I would see things more clearly going forward and would need to react and act. And he was right,” Berry recalled. She began taking more control—she fired her agent for pitching her monotonously and began living out a new life. She told AARP in January 2022:
“It empowered me. Sometimes we know something or see something or feel something, and we talk ourselves out of it. I no longer do that. We’re all going to get older. Our skin is going to shrivel up and we’re going to look different. I see things changing with my face and body, but I’ve never put all my eggs in that basket. I’ve always known that beauty is deeper than the physical body you’re walking around in."
And living out a new life, she is. Even so much recently to randomly attend a drag queen brunch in LA where she was seen dancing and again, living out loud.
"Ms. Berry I see you're on 10 today...and I APPROVE."
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Featured image by Amy Sussman/Getty Images
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Skylar sees things differently. At the time, she was shooting content on her iPhone. Temi came into the picture with a new perspective, an understanding of tech, and, eventually, a camera. “He doesn't give himself enough credit,” Skylar says. “He wasn't just my tripod. He wasn't just standing behind the camera and going ‘click.’ He was giving advice. He was giving me insight to how I could look at things from a different perspective. And I was like, 'Oh, he’s an artist.' I think it was maybe a heartbeat of that kind of energy of like, ‘Baby, can you take this picture?’ And it turned so quickly into, we're partners. We can work together in a way where we're advancing each other's creative thinking.”
The pair often says they’re two sides of the same coin. Skylar is an Aquarius. She attended art school, paints, and loves poetry. She’s more than happy to let the couple’s management firm and agency, Kensington Grey, handle their admin work. And, she loves to sleep in. Temi, on the other hand, wakes up early. He’s a Virgo. He loves a to-do list and regularly checks in on the couple’s brand partnerships spreadsheet to make sure everything is on track.
Because his storytelling was steeped in his love of technology, he didn’t always think of himself as a creative person. “Where I [am] the dreamer who wants to pluck things out of the sky and spend all day with my head in the clouds, Temi [is] so good at grounding me and helping me figure out how to make things make sense on paper. We just work together in such a complimentary way,” Skylar says.
It’s been more than six years since Brooklyn-based couple Temi and Skylar started dating, and nearly four since they cemented their working relationship. On TikTok and Instagram, the couple’s travel, fashion, and home content regularly rack up hundreds of thousands of views. They’ve worked with brands such as Coach, Aesop, Away, and Liquid IV, bringing their vibrant perspectives to every campaign they execute. Still, nearly two years since both Temi and Skylar committed to full-time content creation and creative directing, the couple says their romantic connection remains their priority.
“We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting,” Skylar says.
Working from home can make it hard to separate work from personal life for any entrepreneur. It can be even more challenging when your business partner is also your lover. Temi and Skylar had already used couples therapy as a tool to help them effectively communicate with one another. When they ran into challenges while working together, their therapist helped them set physical boundaries to help combat the issues.
"We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting."
“It actually took us doing very specific physical things to create boundaries between work and play in our relationship,” Skylar says. “So, for instance, we will only have conversations about work when we're out of bed or we're at the table or in the office. Initially, when we started, we had to light a candle to say that, 'Okay, this is a space where we're connecting, we’re not talking about work.' We needed really hard boundaries at the top. And then it became a little bit more organic.”
The boundaries have been crucial to implement, especially because the couple began working together so naturally. When the pair first met, Skylar was NY-based a social strategist for BuzzFeed and was using content creation to drive business to her lingerie company. She was shooting her own content. Temi was working for Microsoft in D.C. He’d recently traded in his DJing equipment for a camera. “I've always loved taking pictures,” he says. “Even when I was a kid, my African mother would wake me up at 3:00 a.m. [during a] party, and be like, 'Come take the family picture.'”
Growing up, Temi says he watched his parents support each other and be the true definition of partners. He knew he wanted the same for his own relationship. But, the couple also wanted to make sure they were being financially responsible. The pair didn’t quit their traditional jobs until they’d saved up two years' worth of their cost of living. And, Temi received his Master of Business Administration from New York University with the knowledge that it could either help him advance in his corporate career or be applicable to his business with Skylar.
Temi and SkylarCj Hart @hartbreakToday, they say their working relationship is more of a “quiet dance.” They still implement some of the boundaries they learned in therapy, but they also lean into their natural strengths and deep love for one another. When we speak, Temi has planned a date for the couple to see Princess Mononoke in 4K IMAX and added it to their Notion so they can factor it into their busy schedules. “I fully plan to date for the rest of my life,” he says.
Skylar says the couple doesn’t just wait for date nights to check in with one another, though. This often happens in the mornings, after Temi has made her peppermint tea and poured himself a cup of coffee. When they ask each other how they slept, she says, it’s not just a “nicety.” It’s a genuine question meant to foster connection.
“A lot of it happens during the day in the midst of work. We'll stop and we'll hug. Or we’ll slow dance in the kitchen,” she says. “Sometimes it's hard to set a whole date night when you have 7,000 things going on. So, we must grasp these moments and check in when we can. And I think it's become so organic to us that I actually didn't even realize how often we do it. But all day long, we're like, 'Are you good? I felt like your energy shifted,' because we're best friends, we just know. We just feel it happen.”
What’s better than being in love? Building wealth while doing it. Watch Making Cents here for real stories of couples who make money moves together.
Featured image by Cj Hart @hartbreak
