Halle Berry and Xun Zhou racially transform in ‘Cloud Atlas’

Halle Berry transforms into a white woman in 'Cloud Atlas.' 

By now, most everyone knows "Cloud Atlas" is a mind-bending, epic tale spanning centuries -- within which individual characters are reborn. Many of the leading actors in the film portray several different people in different eras, with different hair color, and sometimes appearing as a different race, even gender.

Halle Berry, who is biracial, and Chinese actress Xun Zhou do some race-bending in the film. Both of them portray white women at two different points in the epically long 2-hour, 44-minute cinematic journey, made by the creators of "The Matrix" and "Run Lola run" (the Wakowski siblings, and Tom Tykwer, respectively). Incidentally, South Korean actress Doona Bae -- who is getting a lot of buzz for her performance in "Atlas"  also transforms into a white woman at a certain point.
Berry plays a litany of characters in the film, but the white woman she portrays is Jocasta Ayrs, a not-so-true, rather kinky wife of a composer (Jim Broadbent).
 
Xun Zhou also transforms into another race in 'Cloud Atlas.'
And Zhou's white character is the wife of Tom Hanks in the far future when the world has gone to hell. SPOILER: She and her family eventually get killed by a cannibalistic Hugh Grant.
Along with crossing racial lines with the help of heavy makeup -- and in some instances prosthetic and eye contacts -- Hugo Weaving and James D'Arcy bend their genders by playing women. Weaving is especially memorable as the evil Nurse Noakes.
And Berry takes it even a step further: She plays an old Korean male doctor at one point in the film.
To make all the race-bending more fun, Jim Sturgess also transforms into an Asian character.
Watch the trailer for 'Cloud Atlas':