Me-ow! Halle shows up to accept her Razzie

Now in its 25th year, the Golden Raspberry ceremony is typically held the day before the Oscars to recognize the year’s worst film work, so it’s no surprise that the winners almost never show up to collect their trophies. Which is why the audience at Saturday’s ceremony, held at Hollywood’s Ivar Theater, were stunned to see recent Oscar winner Halle Berry appear in person to collect her Razzie for Worst Actress for Catwoman, a movie that also won Worst Picture, Worst Director (single-monikered Frenchman Pitof) and Worst Screenplay.

”Thank you so much. I never in my life thought I would be up here,” Berry said, according to People. ”It’s not like I ever aspired to be here,” she said, parodying her emotional speech from three years ago when she won a Best Actress Academy Award for Monster’s Ball. Clutching her trophy, she told the cheering Razzie crowd, ”And no, I don’t have to give this back. It has my name on it.” She continued, ”I have so many people to thank, because you don’t win a Razzie without a lot of help from others.” Those included ”Warner Bros., for putting me in a godawful piece of s— movie”; Pitof, whose instructions she said she couldn’t understand; her manager, whom she dragged onto the Razzie stage, saying, ”Next time, read the script”; and her costars, because ”in order to give a really rotten performance like I did, you have to have a lot of terrible actors around you.”

Explaining her good-sport appearance, Berry said, ”When I was a kid, my mother told me that if you can’t be a good loser, you can’t be a good winner. If you can’t take the criticism, then you don’t deserve the praise.” She recalled trying to be gracious when, as a young woman, she lost a beauty pageant to another woman, ”but all I wanted to do was f—ing beat the s— out of her.” She called her Razzie victory ”a lesson learned, and I hope to God I never have to see these people again.”

Tying Catwoman with four prizes was Fahrenheit 9/11, whose filmed subjects won Worst Actor (President George W. Bush), Worst Supporting Actor (Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld), Worst Supporting Actress (Britney Spears, shown in a brief foot-in-mouth moment), and Worst Couple (for Bush and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, or Bush and the storybook My Pet Goat). Also (dis)honored was Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, named Worst Remake or Sequel. Awards were selected by 675 bad-movie enthusiasts.

To mark the awards’ 25th anniversary, the Razzies also paid homage to noteworthy losers of the last quarter-century. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, nominated this year for Worst Supporting Actor for his cameo in Around the World in 80 Days, missed out on winning a competitive trophy for the eighth time, but that meant he got the Worst Razzie Loser prize, for the person with the most unsuccessful Razzie nominations. The prize for Worst Comedy of the last 25 years went to Gigli; Worst Drama was Battlefield Earth, and Worst Musical was From Justin to Kelly.