Halle Berry reached new levels of serious acting when she played Leticia Musgrove in 2001’s Monster’s Ball. (And by serious, we mean seriously depressing.) She is wife to a death-row inmate and mother to a morbidly obese child who—spoiler, and we told you it was depressing—ends up killed in a hit-and-run, Leticia reaches out to similarly damaged security guard Hank Grotowski (Billy Bob Thornton). Their lovefest earned Berry an Oscar for Best Actress, making her the first African-American woman to win one.