Hollywood star Halle Berry, pictured 27 March 2007, attempted to commit suicide over a failed relationship but backed out at the last minute, the actress says in a candid US magazine interview due to appear this weekend.[AFP]

Hollywood star Halle Berry attempted to commit suicide over a failed relationship but backed out at the last minute, the actress says in a candid US magazine interview due to appear this weekend.

The 40-year-old actress, who won an Oscar in 2002 for her performance in the hit "Monster's Ball," told Sunday magazine Parade that she tried to gas herself in her car over her stormy marriage to baseball star David Justice.

"I was sitting in my car, and I knew the gas was coming, when I had an image of my mother finding me," she says.

"She sacrificed so much for her children, and to end my life would be an incredibly selfish thing to do. It was all about a relationship. My sense of worth was so low," Berry said.

"I promised myself I would never be a coward again."

Berry describes her second marriage, to singer Eric Benet, as "really horrific." "We were in sex rehab after one year. I wish I had left then, but I was putting everyone's needs before mine," she says.

For the past year, Berry has been dating model Gabriel Aubry and says she is now ready to have a child.

"Now my sights are set on a different chapter in my life, which is motherhood. That's the goal I have very clearly set for myself," she says.