Halle Berry Reveals She Secretly Wed Beau Eric Benet

Halle Berry managed to fool the prying press and keep her marriage to longtime beau Eric Benet a secret for at least two weeks.

Berry used the launch of her Web site `Hallewood.com' in the L.A. suburb of Burbank to announce that she and R&B singer Benet were married. While introducing the evening's musical entertainment, Berry told the crowd "who better to perform than my husband."

The two had been dating for the last couple of years and were constantly asked when they planned on tying the knot. But Berry would say "when the time was right." Her publicist, Vince Cirrincione, would only tell JET that the two were married sometime in January and didn't want any details of the wedding released to the public.

The wedding is the second for the 34-year-old actress and the first for Benet, who has an eight-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. Berry was married to New York Yankees slugger David Justice from 1993-97. That union ended in a bitter, public divorce. When that marriage ended, Berry told EBONY that she was so depressed that she considered suicide.

Then she met Benet, a hot-selling musical artist who's been the object of affection for many females. His hit albums include True to Myself and A Day in the Life. Berry credited Benet with helping her get over the trauma when she was involved in a Sunset Strip car accident that resulted in a woman being injured and the actress being charged with leaving the scene. Berry was freed $13,500, placed on three years probation and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service. Throughout that entire ordeal when she made international headlines, she called Benet her "rock."

She told EBONY: "As the weeks went by, I thought, `Wow, he's still here.' And not just loving me. Loving me hard. He showed me when I was too weak to stand, he would hold me up. When I was too fragile to think, he'd help me figure it out. When I was too scared to face another day, he'd be my rock."

Berry won an Emmy Award as well as a Golden Globe and NAACP Image Award for her stirring portrayal of 1950s screen legend Dorothy Dandridge. She also was in the hit films X-Men, The Flintstones, Jungle Fever and Losing Isaiah. She was part of the ensemble cast for the miniseries Queen.

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