Halle Berry reveals the jobs she did to move out of New York homeless shelter

Halle Berry has opened up about falling on "rough" times when she was just 18 years old. The Kidnap star has said she once lived in a homeless shelter in New York.

The Oscar-winning actress told People magazine that she had moved to the Big Apple to pursue a career in acting but soon found out that it is not easy to survive in the city when one is out of money.

Berry arrived at the city with big dreams of making it in Hollywood as an actress but three months later she ran out of the money she had saved from a modelling gig.

The 50-year-old did ask her mother for financial help but was refused. She now is thankful that her mother did not give her an easy way out of her problems as she would not be where she is at today.

"I called my mother and I asked her to send me some money and she said no. And that subsequently led to a year of not speaking to her because I was so upset that she wouldn't help me," she told the magazine.

"But again that was probably one of the best things she did for me."

"Giving up was never an option" for Berry. She got hired as a waitress and then a bartender after her mother told her to solve her life's problems on her own.

"It was prove to her and everybody else. It took me right back to my high school years. 'You say I can't, watch me. I'm going to figure this out.' And shelter life was part of figuring it out for a minute until I could get a waitressing job. Then I got a bartending job, and until I could figure that out, that's what I did," she said.