Halle Berry deems Oscar controversy 'heartbreaking'

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 3 (UPI) -- Actress Halle Berry says the lack of diversity among this year's Academy Award nominees is "heartbreaking."

Still the only African-American woman to have won an Oscar for Best Actress, Berry, 49, mentioned what she called "the elephant in the room" during Tuesday's Makers Conference.

"I believed that in that moment, that when I said [in my acceptance speech], 'The door tonight has been opened,' I believed that with every bone in my body that this was going to incite change because this door, this barrier, had been broken," she said, according to a report by People.

"And to sit here almost 15 years later, and knowing that another woman of color has not walked through that door, is heartbreaking," she continued. "It's heartbreaking because I thought that moment was bigger than me. It's heartbreaking to start to think maybe it wasn't bigger than me. Maybe it wasn't. And I so desperately felt like it was."

Since Berry accepted her Oscar in 2001 as the Academy's first African-American Best Actress winner, only three other black actresses have been nominated in the category, including Gabourey Sidibe, Viola Davis and Quvenzhaè Wallis. This year, the Academy nominated all white actors and directors, save for director Alejandro G. Iñárritu for The Revenant.

President Barack Obama recently weighed in on the "#OscarsSoWhite" controversy, which has prompted actors like Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith to boycott the awards show, saying the overall debate is "really just an expression of this broader issue: are we making sure that everybody is getting a fair shot?"