Halle Berry says" Finding a Mate is a Hard thing to do"

If you’ve seen “The September Issue,” you know that month is serious business in the magazine industry.

So when Vogue – the publication chronicled in “September Issue” – asked Halle Berry to be on the cover, there was no way she could say no, even though she’d sworn off speaking up in interviews.

“I was burned-out with having other people tell the story about me that they wanted to tell,” Berry, 43, told the magazine. “I told my publicist, ‘I’m not going to talk anymore. I’m just going to live my life and be who I am.’”

But then, Vogue called. “What that means for a woman of color and what that means in the fashion world, what that means to pop culture, there was no way I could say, ‘No I’m not going to be on the biggest issue of the year,’” Berry explained of landing the cover story.

But along with the high-fashion photo shoot came the opportunity to set the record straight on her split from her boyfriend for close to five years – and father of her 2-year-old daughter Nahla – Gabriel Aubry.

“It’s just that you realize you are not meant to go the distance with everybody,” Berry said. “We were meant to bring this amazing little person into the world. And I think that’s why we came together. And because of that, we are going to be together, forever, all three of us. We are a family until we are not here anymore.”

She and Aubry are still friends, Berry said, and although it wasn’t a “love connection” for the two of them, she has no doubt he was the right man to have a baby with. And when it comes to finding love, Berry said she’s no different from the rest of us. (No, really.)

“I don’t think I’m unlike a lot of people. I am just someone who is trying to find that mate, and I think it’s a really hard thing to do,” Berry said. “I am not willing to stay somewhere where I am not really happy. And I am not willing to pretend I am for the kid’s sake or so that I don’t have to go through another public humiliation.”

In the end, the actress said, she’s starting to accept that she may not be the type of person who wants to settle down.

“It’s about accepting who we really are, not who we want to be. As much as I have always wanted to be in this committed relationship and have the picket fence and grow old with the same person, I’m coming to terms with: Maybe that’s just not who I am,” Berry added.

She’s also the type of person who’s not afraid to take a risk, which lead to her taking a role in 2004’s “Catwoman.” “The moment I won the Oscar, I felt the teardown the very next day,” Berry said of her historic Best Actress win in 2001 for “Monster’s Ball.” “I thought, ‘If I’m going down, I’m going down taking chances and daring to risk.’ Hence…'Catwoman.’”

In the beginning, she had high hopes, but Berry readily admits that the story “just wasn’t good enough.”

“But I will tell you one thing that has helped me deal with the failure of that,” Berry told Vogue. “Critics bashed it, but people come up to me now and either they say, ‘I loved you in the movie B.A.P.S.’ which is a comedy that I did, or they say, ‘I don’t care what anybody says, I liked 'Catwoman.’ Nobody ever says, ‘I really loved 'Monster’s Ball.'’”

The September issue of Vogue hits newsstands August 24.