Halle Berry appeared at the California Capitol on Tuesday, June 25, to testify in favor of a bill that would limit the ability of paparazzi to photograph children of celebrities and public figures.
The Oscar-winning actress, who is currently pregnant with her second child, talked to the Assembly Committee on Public Safety about how her daughter, 5-year-old Nahla, has been harassed by paparazzi.
“My daughter doesn’t want to go to school because she knows ‘the men’ are watching for her,” Berry said, according to The Associated Press. “They jump out of the bushes and from behind cars and who knows where else, besieging these children just to get a photo.”
Berry said she was speaking in favor of the bill as a “mother of a daughter and the baby boy in my belly.” Her fiance, Olivier Martinez confirmed earlier this month thatthe couple is expecting a boy. The actress confirmed her pregnancy in April.
“If it passes the quality of my life and my children’s lives will be dramatically changed,” she later added.
The committee approved the bill and it will go on to the Assembly Judiciary Committee, the wire service reports. Supporters of the bill reportedly promised to clarify language so that the First Amendment rights of newsgathering organizations would be protected.
During her testimony, Berry also talked about a time where her family was returning from a Hawaiian vacation and claimed that she and her family were harassed by 50 photographers who blocked their way out of Los Angeles International Airport.
“They were trying to start a fight with my fiance because if they get a photo of that it’s more money,” Berry said, according to the AP. “She [Nahla] asked ‘Mommy, are they going to kill us?’ She didn’t get to sleep until 3 a.m. because she can’t get this out of her mind and she doesn’t understand what just happened to her.”
Berry and Martinez became engaged in January 2012. They initially met when they starred together in the movie “Dark Tide” that year.
