Halle Berry ‘Probably Would Have Had 5 Children’ Had She Started Having Them Earlier: ‘I Loved Being Pregnant’

She is of course crazy about her two kids, but Halle Berry admits that had she started having children sooner, she may have ended up with a lot more little ones.

The 52-year-old and InStyle got together for an interview, and the actress touched on many different things, including motherhood. “I became a mom at 40. Knowing that someone would always be counting on me made me a better person,” the Oscar winner told the outlet. “I’m more focused and in line with my values and my goals. I stopped letting negativity get me down. Plus, I loved being pregnant. Had I started earlier, I probably would have had five children. Or if I hadn’t been busy trying to make movies, I would have been the perfect surrogate. All the hormones made me feel amazing.”

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“I was so alive with my purpose and my femininity. It felt like my body was doing what it was built to do,” Halle added. The Monster’s Ball star shares her eldest child, Nahla, 11, with her ex, Gabriel Aubry, and Maceo, 5, with her ex-husband, fellow actor Oliver Martinez.

“Being a mom is the best job, but my kids don’t care about who I am outside of this house,” the former model explained. “My daughter got a sense of who I am from friends at school. And — this is funny — for the last year, my son has been saying my full name really loudly in public like, ‘Halle Berry, can you pass me the ketchup?’ It’s just so embarrassing! He knows it gets a reaction from people, but he can’t quite figure out why.”

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Halle confesses that all she wants is her kids to be proud of her. “The only thing I want at the end of the day is for my children to say, ‘You weren’t perfect, you didn’t do everything right, but you were a good mom,'” Halle explained. “I spent almost 10 years being in mom mode. Now that my youngest is starting kindergarten, I feel like I can get back into my life, and that’s important. I want to keep challenging myself and proving that I can still follow my passions, take risks, and take on characters who make me feel alive. But I prove that to myself, not to anyone else.”

“I think that’s what keeps us young,” Halle added. “It keeps me connected to my children because I’m alive in the world. One day they’re going to grow up, and I don’t want to be the mom who’s crying because her kids left. I want to be the mom who says, ‘Yes, girl, go fly. Go do you, do your life.'”

This isn’t the first time that the former Bond Girl has opened up about motherhood. “You’re so much more ready to be a parent after 40 than when you’re 20,” she once exclusively told Closer Weekly. “You know yourself better.” When you’re older, “you’ve done a lot of things for yourself, selfishly,” the Catwoman actress explained. “When you wait until later in life, you can really put your kids forward in a more meaningful way.”