IN THE opening scene of the movie, Things We Lost In The Fire, Halle Berry wears no make-up, her eyelids pink like the gills of a dead fish and her hair a toss of wet seaweed.

She plays a mother whose perfect life is turned upside down upon being widowed, and who is left to fend for two young children.

'Doing this movie confirmed my maternal instincts,' she says. 'I felt for the longest time that I was meant to be a mother.'

In real life, Berry, 41, is glamorous - even when dressed down in jeans and three layers of furry sweaters that would look like Grannywear on anyone else. At the time of this interview, she was also four months pregnant with the child of her supermodel boyfriend, Gabriel Aubry.

'I felt for the longest time that I was meant to be a mother'

'The movie is about a mother who is so much a mother that she doesn't allow herself to grieve when her husband dies, because she's just thinking about her children,' Berry continues.

'I wanted to portray her sadness, and her going into shock, shutting out from the world, without giving the impression that she was cold.'

On and offscreen, Berry is set to be a yummy mummy, whether or not she is conducting a press interview in a posh London Hotel (The Dorchester) or, seen later on in the film, in flattering coats and picking up toys in cashmere jumpers.

The film's opening vignette is just window-dressing for her ascension to the hall of fame of 'serious actors', following an Oscar-winning turn in Monster's Ball (2001) as the widow of a man on Death Row. This time around, in a not too different role, she has Dogme director Susanne Bier (After The Wedding, 2006) on her collaborator list.

In Bier's hands, heavy family drama underlines enigmatically claustrophobic sequences of extreme camera close-ups.

'We were all a little frightened at first, we've never worked this way,' Berry recalls of shooting with Bier.

'Always to have the camera next to you - your eyelash, right up there, it's a different dynamic.'

The cinematographic approach puts the dark themes of the film into perspective, visually touching the inner world of Berry's single mother, who comes to grips with widowhood while also rehabilitating her dead husband's best friend, a drug addict played by the magnetic Benicio Del Toro.

If the film has done anything for Berry - quite apart from unleashing motherly instincts - it has reminded her of the fragility of life.

'I believe in fate. I believe that we are all here for a purpose, and my life is turning out exactly as it should be,' she says.

This, you realise, is coming from the daughter of a single mother herself. Berry is the offspring of an English nurse who married an orderly after moving to America, and had named her child after a department store in Cleveland.

The actress seems to have hit gold with serious movie roles now, after braving the beauty contest circuit and blockbuster sex-symbol vehicles like the X-Men and James Bond franchises.

Until recently, however, Berry's private life has been erratic.

She crashed through two broken marriages with baseball player David Justice and musician Eric Benet before reaching the latest conclusion of a stable relationship with Aubry, father of her unborn child. While the current baby is due next month, Berry plans to have a second child as soon as possible.

She affirms her character-forming experiences in life at large: 'I wouldn't have changed a single minute of it.'

Not that she has simply let the world pass her by, of course. Berry's role in Bier's film, for example, was first created for a Caucasian woman, she says.

'But you don't get roles like this every day,' she adds.

'When I read the script, I knew I had to fight for the part.'

Early reviews of the film seem to be divided, but there is no doubt that she can hold more than her own in the vehicle - beyond her obvious sex symbol status.

She knows this and carries it across in a body language that is confident and assertive.

Perhaps it is the hormones or perhaps it is Joan Didion's 2005 book, The Year Of Magical Thinking, that she has just begun reading and is raving to everyone about: For once, Berry is pleased and contented with her life.

'I can't wait for things to happen and I know they will be good. I'm on an upswing now.'

Things We Lost In The Fire is now showing at Cathay Cineleisure Orchard.

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Feb 23 2008.