Spike Lee didn’t want Halle Berry for Jungle Fever role

Director Spike Lee was hesitant to cast Halle Berry as a drug addict in his 1991 movie Jungle Fever, because he thought she was too beautiful for the role. The Malcolm X filmmaker admits Berry had to audition several times for film because he didn’t think moviegoers would believe that such a stunner could be so strung out.
He says, “Halle Berry, that’s her first film, Vivian, the two-dollar crack ho (sic). So when she came in, true story, I said, ‘You know what, you’re too fine to play a crack ho’, But (she said), ‘Spike, I can do it, I can do it’. I couldn’t buy it, I didn’t see it. She came back one more time, as the character. That was it.”
Lee also explains he was unaware Samuel L. Jackson was battling substance abuse while he was playing a drug addict in the movie.
He continues, “I never knew that. I didn’t know that until after the movie came out.”