Halle Berry Forced to Change Red Carpet Outfit Due to Dress Code

Halle Berry had to do a last-minute outfit switch at the Cannes Film Festival red carpet this morning, after the festival changed their dress code just before the ceremony was set to kick off.

Right before the 2025 Cannes Film Festival began in France, festival organizers announced the event would be banning extreme nudity and “excessively voluminous” clothing. Dresses with lengthy trains or other characteristics that could clog or delay red carpet walks were also banned.

The new dress code policy is likely in part due to the outfits worn last year by Bella Hadid and Natasha Poly, who both generated headlines when they wore sheer or see-through dresses on the red carpet that left nothing to the imagination.

“I had an amazing dress by Gupta that I cannot wear tonight because it’s too big of a train,” Berry said during the Cannes jury conference on her last-minute switch. “I’m not going to break the rules. The nudity part is also probably a good rule.”

In a statement yesterday, leaders of the festival further explained that the goal of the new guidelines were “not to regulate attire per se, but to prohibit full nudity on the red carpet, in accordance with the institutional framework of the event and French law.”

Berry has a big role to play this year at Cannes Film Festival, as she’s serving on the competition jury that will decide who will win the Palme d’Or, one of the most prestigious awards in the cinema world.

She’ll serve on the jury alongside Jeremy Strong, the Emmy winner known for Succession. Other big names on the jury include beloved Korean director Hong Sang-soo, Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia (who won the runner-up prize at last year’s Cannes for the international hit All We Imagine As Light), Italian actor Alba Rohrwacher, Mexican director Carlos Reygadas, French-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani, and Congolese documentarist Dieudo Hamadi.