How stars overcame obstacles

Ebony, July, 1995

Halle Berry, James Earl Jones and others triumphed over asthma, stuttering and other disadvantages

They have stared down adversity and spat in its eye.

Although today they are the best at what they do, internationally famous and adored, life for them, to paraphrase Langston Hughes, "ain't been no crystal stair."

Growing up, they endured jeers and taunts and cruel rejection. And before scaling the heights, they overcame the kind of obstacles that not only could have derailed their careers, but could have made them statistics or street casualties.

Could have, but didn't. That's because every one of the stars featured here refused to give up or give in when life dealt them a nasty blow. Instead, they did what was necessary not only to stay in the game, but to emerge clear and undisputed victors.

Take, for instance, James Earl Jones. Known the world over for the natural brilliance of his voice - beyond tich, it is resonant, beyond sensual, it is sonorous, beyond imitation, it is one-of-a-kind - you would never guess the award-winning actor suffers from a speech impediment.

His voice is so distinctive and so popular, in fact, that even if you didn't know his face from his numerous Broadway performances (notably in The Great White Hope, for which he earned his first Tony Award, and as Troy Maxon in August Wilson's Fences, for which he won another), even if you had never seen him act on the silver screen (most recently in the popular Tom Clancy thrillers The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger), even if you'd never tuned in to his new television series, Under One Roof, chances are you would still know The Voice.

It is Mufasa, the father lion in The Lion King. It is Darth Vader, the diabolical villain in the Star Wars film trilogy. It is the mellifluous "Welcome to Bell Atlantic" greeting frequently heard after dialing 4-1-1.

Since he was a teenager growing up in northern Michigan, Jones' voice has always set him apart. But not for the reason you would think. Almost 50 years ago, the voice of the Tony/Emmy/Grammy-winning star set him apart because he stuttered.

And not just mildly. Severely. So severely, in fact, that Jones rarely spoke in classes at Dickson High School in Brethren, Mich. It was there, when an English teacher asked him to stand in front of the class and recite a poem he had written, that Jones discovered what speech therapists say is often the salvation of many stutterers: the scripted page.

As helpful as that discovery was, however, it did not end Jones' stuttering problem. On the contrary, he has said, it remains with him today. He has simply learned how to control it. "You keep the stuttering under control because you have a script," he has explained. When operating without one, "I just try to get through the day or the conversation," says Jones.

That just-take-it-one-day-at-a-time formula has also worked for Halle Berry who, six years ago, discovered, in a particularly harrowing way, that she had diabetes. While shooting her now defunct television series, Living Dolls, the 26-year-old actress collapsed on the set and went into a diabetic coma.

Though she takes insulin to control the disease, "sometimes y blood sugar goes really high and I get really sick," says Berry. "Stress has a lot to do with diabetes and there is a lot of it in this business."

To minimize it, the Cleveland-born actress says she has cultivated a healthy lifestyle that allows her to control the diabetes, rather than letting the diabetes control her. She watches both what and how she eats (regular meals, no fried foods or sweets) and exercises regularly (she has a personal trainer with whom she works out at her homes in Atlanta and L.A.)

Equally important, says Berry, who is currently shooting her next film, Race The Sun, in Australia, she maintains her emotional equilibrium by 1) putting her two-year marriage to Atlanta Braves star David justice first and 2) refusing to take either the racism or the hypocrisy of Hollywood personally.

"In this business," she says, "everybody lies to you. They really like you if the movie you're in was a success, and the minute you're in something that bombs, you're on the 'out' list. David is my sense of stability in all this."

Like Berry, Olympic Gold Medalist Jacide Joyner-Kersee has triumphed over a disease that could have easily ended her spectacular career.

"Asthma's a major problem in my life," says the 33-year-old track and field star who, with three gold medals (not to mention a silver and a bronze), has been called America's finest athlete.

It was such a major problem for the East St. Louis-born athlete, in fact, that it took her years to come to grips with it. "For years I was in denial," the woman who holds the American records in both the indoor and the outdoor long jump and the world record in the heptathlon has confessed. When I was a freshman [at UCLA where she played basketball for the Bruins], I was diagnosed but afraid to tell my coaches because they'd think I was out of shape."