Her Perfect role

“People think they know me, they think they know me when they meet me, but they really don’t,” Halle Berry says. “They’re perfect strangers to me, but somehow they don’t recognize me as a perfect stranger.” She gets to play exactly that in the new movie “Perfect Stranger,” opening today.

Berry is used to fighting for the parts she gets. But this thriller, which co-stars Bruce Willis, was actually offered to her.

“The funny thing was, when I first read it, I thought, ‘This is going to be great for somebody. Somebody’s going to have an awesome time,’ ” Berry says.

“Then the realization sort of sunk in. My manager said, ‘No, no, no, they want you for this one.’ That didn’t really dawn on me at first.”

“Perfect Stranger” is one of those twisty mysteries full of false leads and double identities.

Berry, as an investigative newspaper reporter trying to find the killer of a lifelong friend, plays multiple characters. At times she’s Rowena Price; at others she’s Rowena Price playing a woman who calls herself Catherine Pogue.

The challenge, she says, was having Price play Pogue well enough for the other characters in the movie to believe her, but not too well.

“(Director) James Foley would say to me sometimes, ‘Cut!’ And I would say, ‘What? Wasn’t that good?’ And he would say, ‘Ro (Price) does not have an Academy Award. You’ve got to do that over.’ “

Berry will never be allowed to forget that she’s an Oscar-winning actress (for 2001’s “Monster’s Ball”), though she wouldn’t mind if people would just drop it.

“You know what? It has made it harder, but it’s only made it harder because of the pressure that comes along with that award,” Berry says. “I’ve worked really hard to not wait myself out of my career by waiting for another Academy Award-winning role. I wouldn’t have worked for five years now.”

Anyway, she adds: “I don’t just want to do lofty, Oscar-type roles. That was never the plan that I had for myself.”

For a movie star of her profile, celebrated for her exceptional beauty – she’s 40, but easily looks 10 years younger – Berry’s humble origins in Cleveland reveal themselves in the honesty with which she’ll talk about anything. Yes, even “Catwoman.”

Her starring role in that 2004 film was reviled by critics, but Berry took the experience in good humor, even showing up at the Razzie Awards – the anti-Oscars – to pick up her prize for worst actress.

“It was probably one of the best things I think I’ve done,” she says, “and I totally got to put that to bed, but also got to laugh at myself, and somehow that sort of helps us put our failures behind us.”

Reminded that she starred with “Perfect Stranger” co-star Willis once before, in 1991’s “The Last Boy Scout,” she smiles.

“He didn’t even know I was alive on that movie,” she says. “He probably doesn’t even know we worked together, and I was so in awe of Bruce Willis and being on a big, fancy movie like that.”

Now, of course, they’re equals in the Hollywood pecking order.

“It reminded me of the absurdity of life, how you can go from one extreme to the other within the same life,” Berry says. “Just because you’re in one place doesn’t mean you can’t go wherever your mind can imagine.”

The place Berry occupies now, however, comes with a price. Privacy, for instance, is fleeting.

“Only at home,” she says, “and I spend a lot of time at home as a result of it, and it’s a good thing. I value home, and I make sure it’s what I want it to be.”

“Perfect Stranger” plays off its title with a subplot about the anonymity of the Internet, which Berry sees as a mixed blessing. The Web may be a wonderful resource, she says, but celebrities like herself often aren’t allowed to be anonymous.

“I’m diabetic, so I go on to diabetic chat rooms and learn about the disease and the science and things I need to know that help me, which is a good thing,” she says.

“I go as myself. People don’t believe it half the time, but I just buzz right past it.

“But the Internet is also a very negative place because people can say whatever they want and not have to take responsibility for their comments.

“If you’re in a public position, you have to take responsibility for things you think, it seems like. You have to take responsibility for things you said 10 years ago.”

Berry this week criticized Parade magazine for publishing comments that she made about attempting suicide while married to former baseball player David Justice in the 1990s, saying they were dredged up from old stories.

Parade insists the quotes in the April 1 profile came from a current interview with one of its writers.

Berry, also divorced from singer Eric Benet, is seeing model Gabriel Aubry and has emphatically vowed to never get married again.

After all, life, as she sees it, already has held enough challenges.

“People have asked me on this press tour, ‘Now that you’re 40, how hard is it going to be for you to get roles?’ ” she says.

“And I thought, ‘After fighting for 20 years to find a place for a woman of color, a woman of 40 seems like a piece of cake.’ “