There is also a long list of actresses who have shown promise even though they're just getting started or who, even with a good handful of Hollywood roles under their belts, don't seem to be getting the opportunities they should: I'd like to see more and better roles for Nia Long ("Boiler Room," "Stigmata,"), Jada Pinkett Smith ("Ali"), Kerry Washington ("Save the Last Dance," "Our Song"), Queen Latifah ("Living Out Loud") and Kimberly Elise ("Beloved," "John Q."). I'm not much of a Destiny's Child fan, but Beyoncé Knowles might be fun as the next Austin Powers girl. And although you'd think black actresses who specialize in comedy would have an easier time building a career (if Whoopi Goldberg's success is any indication), I'm still wondering when average moviegoers are going to finally start noticing Wanda Sykes ("Pootie Tang" and "Down to Earth"), who takes broad comic conventions and stretches them into some pretty far-out territory.

We can't really predict what's to become of this underappreciated crop of actresses. There is evidence that things are changing for the better: Younger audiences, raised on hip-hop, are more receptive to movies that don't walk strictly defined color lines. (The teen interracial-romance picture "Save the Last Dance" was a huge hit, bringing in more than $90 million at the box office.) Quentin Tarantino resuscitated the career of the fabulous Pam Grier with the 1997 "Jackie Brown," creating a good starring role for a largely forgotten but deserving black actress. (Not to mention that Grier is a knockout reminder of how much sex appeal a 50-ish woman can have.) Tarantino didn't cast Grier simply to make a political statement -- he had always loved her work -- but my guess is that he was also hoping to lead by example.

Hollywood is, unfortunately, slow to pick up on such subtleties. Last spring, People magazine published a report on the status of African-Americans in Hollywood. It was an update on a subject the magazine had first addressed in 1996, and while there have been a few encouraging signs of progress in the past five years, overall the picture wasn't particularly heartening.

That's partly because, to put it bluntly, the same old dunderheads are running the studios, and they show their true colors simply by opening their mouths. The People article noted that studios sometimes claim that movies featuring African-Americans tend not to do well in overseas markets, which is why less money is spent on them in the first place. (To give you a sense of the scale: Berry made $2.5 million for "Swordfish"; Julia Roberts was paid $20 million for "Erin Brockovich.") The article quotes 20th Century Fox studio chairman Tom Rothman saying that African-American dramas like "Soul Food" are "too specific an American experience to be relatable to an international audience."

Surely, that's the voice of genius speaking. Everyone knows that only black Americans are interested in black Americans. (That purely black American art form, R&B, sure turned out to be a dud in other nations of the world, didn't it?) Comments like Rothman's are the purest example of the narrowness of mainstream Hollywood. Could you imagine the same argument being used to keep "Monsoon Wedding" out of American theaters?

My guess is that Rothman phrased his answer as he did because he can't come right out and say that movies featuring black actors aren't profitable -- because it simply isn't true. In its roundup of movie grosses for 2001, Film Comment includes "The Brothers" ($27 million) and "Two Can Play That Game" ($22 million) in the "hugely profitable" category for movies released by indie divisions of major studios. Among major studio releases, "Rush Hour 2" ($226 million) and "Save the Last Dance" ($91 million) were also hugely profitable. And among independent releases, "O" ($16 million) was second only to "Memento" ($25.5 million).

So if the issue is profit in relation to cost, then the Hollywood power elite can't claim that African-American actors can't be cast for financial reasons. And there's no excuse for them to be casting male actors in big movies but not women. Newton didn't keep "M:I-2" from being a big hit, and my guess is that Berry won't hurt the next Bond movie, either.

To say that many of Hollywood's most powerful players are guilty of narrow thinking is an all-too-kind understatement. Mostly, they're not thinking at all. Lena Horne lost the role of the racially mixed Julie in the 1951 "Showboat" to Ava Gardner, who, in the eyes of the studio execs, fit the role just fine; all she needed was a slightly darker shade of Pan-Cake.

Fifty years later, no movie studio would dare such a move: Even the most boneheaded executive would recognize it as racially insensitive. But the invisibility of black actresses is a bigger and more elusive problem. If Hollywood is making movies strictly for so-called Middle America -- for those steadily shrinking patches of the country where one has to drive for miles to encounter a person of color -- then it's not making movies for America at all. Studio execs may look at the numbers all day long. But they still don't see who we are.

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