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Helen Hunt

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This article is about the American actress. For other uses, see Helen Hunt (disambiguation).
Helen Hunt
Hunt in 2015
Born
Helen Elizabeth Hunt

(1963-06-15) June 15, 1963 (age 61)
Culver City, California, U.S.
Alma materUniversity of California, Los Angeles (no degree)
Occupations
  • Actress
  • director
  • screenwriter
Years active1973–present
WorksFull list
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1999; div. 2000)​
Partner(s)Matthew Carnahan
(2001–2017)
Children1
FatherGordon Hunt
RelativesPeter H. Hunt (uncle)
AwardsFull list

Helen Elizabeth Hunt (born June 15, 1963) is an American actress and director. Her accolades include an Academy Award, four Primetime Emmy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards.

Hunt rose to fame portraying newlywed Jamie Buchman in the sitcom Mad About You (1992–1999), which earned her three Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress and four Primetime Emmy Awards for Lead Actress. Hunt won the Academy Award for Best Actress for starring as a single mother in the romantic comedy film As Good as It Gets (1997), and established a film career by starring in Twister (1996), Cast Away (2000), What Women Want (2000), and Pay It Forward (2000).

Hunt made her directorial film debut with Then She Found Me (2007). For her portrayal of Cheryl Cohen-Greene in The Sessions (2012), she gained a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her other notable films include Bobby (2006), Soul Surfer (2011), and The Miracle Season (2018), and she has directed the film Ride (2014), and episodes of television series, including House of Lies in 2016, This Is Us in 2016, Feud: Bette and Joan in 2017, American Housewife in 2018, and the premiere episode of the Mad About You revival in 2019.

Early life

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Helen Hunt was born in Culver City, California. Her mother, Jane Elizabeth (née Novis), worked as a photographer, and her father, Gordon Hunt, was a film, voice and stage director and acting coach.[1] Her uncle, Peter H. Hunt, was also a director. Her maternal grandmother, Dorothy (née Anderson) Fries, was a voice coach.[2] Hunt's paternal grandmother was from a German-Jewish family, while Hunt's other grandparents were of English descent (her maternal grandfather was born in England), with a Methodist religious background.[3][4][5][6]

When she was three, Hunt's family moved to New York City, where her father directed theatre and Hunt attended plays as a child several times a week.[7] Hunt graduated from Providence High School in Burbank, California.[8] She also studied ballet, and briefly attended the University of California, Los Angeles.[7][9][10]

Career

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1970s–1980s

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Hunt as Lisa in It Takes Two, 1982

Hunt began working as a child actress in the 1970s.[7] Her early roles included an appearance on season 2, episode 3 of TV series "Family" (first aired Oct 26, 1976), playing Robin Trask, a classmate of Kristy McNichol. She also had an appearance as Murray Slaughter's daughter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the 1977 episode “Murray Ghosts for Ted”, as the daughter of George Segal's main character in Rollercoaster (1977), alongside Lindsay Wagner in an episode of The Bionic Woman, an appearance in an episode of Ark II called "Omega", and a regular role in the television series The Swiss Family Robinson.[7] She appeared as a marijuana-smoking classmate on an episode of The Facts of Life. In 1982, Hunt played a young woman who, while on PCP, jumps out of a second-story window, in a made-for-television film called Desperate Lives (a scene which she mocked during a Saturday Night Live monologue in 1994),[11] and she was cast on the ABC sitcom It Takes Two, which lasted only one season. In 1983, she starred in Bill: On His Own, with Mickey Rooney and played Tami Maida in the fact-based production Quarterback Princess; both were made-for-television films. She also had a recurring role on St. Elsewhere as Clancy Williams, the girlfriend of Jack "Boomer" Morrison (David Morse), and had a notable guest appearance as a cancer-stricken mother-to-be in a two-part episode of Highway to Heaven.

By the mid and late 1980s, Hunt had begun appearing in studio films aimed at a teenage audience. Her first major film role was that of a punk rock girl in the sci-fi film Trancers (1984). She played the friend of an army brat in the comedy Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985), with Sarah Jessica Parker and Shannen Doherty, and appeared as the daughter of a woman on the verge of divorce in Francis Ford Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), alongside Kathleen Turner. In 1987, Hunt starred with Matthew Broderick in Project X, as a graduate student assigned to care for chimpanzees used in a secret Air Force project. In 1988, she appeared in Stealing Home, as Hope Wyatt, the sister of Billy Wyatt, played by Mark Harmon and a cast featuring Jodie Foster and Harold Ramis. Next of Kin (1989) featured her as the pregnant wife of a respectable lawman, opposite Patrick Swayze and Liam Neeson.

1990s

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In 1990, Hunt appeared with Tracey Ullman and Morgan Freeman in a Wild West version of The Taming of the Shrew, at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.[12] In 1991, Hunt starred in Trancers II, the direct-to-video sequel to Trancers (1984), and played the lead female role in the sitcom My Life and Times, which only aired for 6 episodes. In 1992, she would appear in the drama The Waterdance as a married woman having an affair with a writer; in the romantic comedy Only You, as a travel agent and the love interest of a doll's house designer; in the mockumentary Bob Roberts, as Rose Pondell, a field reporter at WLNO; and in Mr. Saturday Night, as a young agent named Annie Well. In 1992, Hunt returned for her fourth and final outing as Lena in Trancers III, the second sequel of the Trancers series including Trancers 1.5, which was among her five film releases that year.

Hunt signs autographs for fans outside the 1994 Emmy Awards rehearsal

Hunt came to prominence in North America with the sitcom Mad About You (1992–99), in which she starred opposite Paul Reiser, as a public relations specialist and one half of a couple in NYC. She went on to win Emmy Awards for her performances in 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999.[7] For the show's final season, Reiser and Hunt received $1 million ($1.8 million today) per episode.[13] She directed several episodes of Mad About You, including the series finale.

In 1995, Hunt played the wife of an ex-con living in Queens, alongside Nicolas Cage, in Kiss of Death, a very loosely based remake of the 1947 film noir classic of the same name. In the disaster action film Twister (1996), Hunt starred with Bill Paxton as storm chasers researching tornadoes. Both actors were temporarily blinded by bright electronic lamps halfway through filming, and needed hepatitis shots after shooting in a particularly unsanitary ditch. Twister was the second-highest-grossing film of 1996, behind Independence Day.[14] The film sold an estimated 54,688,100 tickets in the US. It made US$494.5 million around the globe.[15]

Hunt went on to win the Academy Award for Best Actress in the romantic comedy As Good as It Gets (1997), in which she took on the role of a waitress and single mother who finds herself falling in love with a misanthropic, obsessive-compulsive romance novelist, played by Jack Nicholson.[7] Hunt and Nicholson got along well during the filming, and they connected immediately: "It wasn't even what we said", Hunt added. "It was just some frequency we both could tune into that was very, very compatible."[16] Author and screenwriter Andrew Horton described their on-screen relationship as being like "fire and ice, oil and water—seemingly complete opposites".[17] Nonetheless, Hunt was Nicholson's perfect counterpart, and delivered "a simply stunning performance", wrote critic Louise Keller. The film was a tremendous box office success, grossing US$314 million worldwide.[18] In 1998, she played the love interest of Moe Szyslak on The Simpsons episode "Dumbbell Indemnity", and played Viola in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, at Lincoln Center in New York.[19]

2000s

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Two of Hunt's four film releases in 2000—the comedy Dr. T & the Women and the drama Pay It Forward—were both released in October. While the first featured her as one of the women that encompass the everyday life of a wealthy gynecologist, opposite Richard Gere, the second starred her as the love interest of a physically and emotionally scarred grade school teacher, played by Kevin Spacey. Critic Roger Ebert highlighted her performance in Pay It Forward, despite finding the film itself to be "too emotionally manipulative".[20] Her other two 2000 films—the romantic comedy What Women Want, and the drama Cast Away— were released in December, to outstanding box office receipts. In What Women Want, Hunt starred with Mel Gibson as the co-worker and love interest of a Chicago executive, and in Cast Away, she portrayed the long-term girlfriend of a FedEx employee marooned on an uninhabited island, alongside Tom Hanks.

Hunt starred in Woody Allen's The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001), as an efficiency expert hypnotized by a crooked hypnotist into stealing jewels. Despite the film's limited success, Roger Ebert asserted: "Hunt in particular has fun with a wisecracking dame role that owes something, perhaps, to Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday."[21] In 2003, Hunt returned to Broadway in Yasmina Reza's Life x 3,[19] and in 2004, she starred in the drama A Good Woman, as a femme fatale in 1930s NYC. AV Club, in its review for the latter, remarked: "Helen Hunt looks embarrassingly out of place trying to play an infamous seductress".[22] She played a socialite, as part of an ensemble cast, in Emilio Estevez's drama Bobby (2006), about the hours leading up to the Robert F. Kennedy assassination. As a member of the cast, she was nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Cast in a Motion Picture but won the Hollywood Film Festival Award for Best Ensemble Cast.[23]

Hunt made her feature film directorial debut in Then She Found Me (2007), in which she also starred as a 39-year-old Brooklyn elementary school teacher, who after years is contacted by the flamboyant host of a local talk show, played by Bette Midler, who introduces herself as her biological mother. After first reading Elinor Lipman's novel, she tried to interest numerous studios in the material, and her unsuccessful efforts led her to begin writing the screenplay and raising funds to produce it herself. Upon its release, Ruthe Stein of the San Francisco Chronicle observed, "You would think that frontloading Then She Found Me with so much plot would make it play like a soap opera. But Hunt saves the movie from this fate in two ways. First she turns in a touchingly real performance, the best of her big-screen career. Forget that As Good as It Gets won her an Oscar.[24] She's eons better and more realistic in this one [...] By directing Then She Found Me, Helen becomes its savior as well [...] Hunt knows when to rein in the Divine Miss M instead of allowing her to go into full Kabuki mode. [She] also coaxes pitch-perfect performances from Broderick and Firth."[25]

2010s

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Hunt in 2011

Hunt starred in the dramedy Every Day (2010), as one half of a married couple pulled apart by increasing responsibilities.[26] According to Los Angeles Times, the film "comes as a reminder of [Hunt's] talent for understatement, and a wish to see more of her".[27] In the biographical drama Soul Surfer (2011), she played the mother of the Hawaiian-born champion surfer Bethany Hamilton, on whose life the film was based. Her first wide release since 2001's The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Soul Surfer made US$47.1 million internationally.[28]

Hunt starred as sex surrogate Cheryl Cohen-Greene in The Sessions (2012), alongside John Hawkes and William H. Macy. The role required Hunt to perform multiple scenes of full-frontal nudity, on which she further said: "Being naked was challenging, but even more than that was the vulnerability. I felt vulnerable because I was naked. I felt vulnerable because we were having such a vulnerable moment in this character's life. This was a real journey that someone had gone on, and I wanted to do right by that."[29] Her performance was acclaimed by critics and earned her several award nominations, including an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "Hunt's performance may be physically bold but is equally marked by its maturity and composure."[30]

Hunt played research geneticist Mary-Claire King in the independent drama Decoding Annie Parker (2013),[31][32] which was released to a mixed critical response.[33] She wrote and directed the drama Ride (2014), in which she also starred as a mother who travels cross-country to California to be with her son after he decides to drop out of school and become a surfer. Rotten Tomatoes' critical consensus read: "Ride reaffirms Helen Hunt's immense acting talent —but suggests that she still needs time to develop as a director."[34]

In The Miracle Season (2018), based on the true story of the Iowa City West High School volleyball team,[35] Hunt played Kathy Bresnahan, a volleyball coach. In 2019, Hunt appeared in the BBC series World on Fire as journalist Nancy Campbell, a character inspired by real-life war correspondent Clare Hollingworth,[36] and reprised the role of Jamie Buchman in the Mad About You revival, which premiered in the form of a limited series, by Spectrum Originals. In December 2018, Hunt was a guest narrator at Disney's Candlelight Processional at Walt Disney World.[37]

2020s

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In 2020, Hunt appeared in the crime drama film The Night Clerk alongside Tye Sheridan.[38] In December 2020, it was reported that Hunt would appear in a leading role in the Starz series Blindspotting, created by Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal and based on their 2018 film of the same name.[39][40] In September 2022, she starred in the European premiere of Eureka Day at The Old Vic theatre in London.[41]

Personal life

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In 1994, Hunt started dating actor Hank Azaria. They married in 1999, and divorced 17 months later.[1] In 2001, Hunt began a relationship with producer Matthew Carnahan. In 2004, they had a daughter.[1][42] The couple split in August 2017.[43][44]

Hunt was one of the demonstrators at the 2017 Women's March held on January 21 in Los Angeles, California.[45]

Filmography

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Main article: Helen Hunt filmography

Awards and nominations

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Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Helen Hunt

References

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  1. ^ a b c Helen Hunt at the TCM Movie Database
  2. ^ "Helen Hunt Takes a Leap of Faith, Lands in 'Pamela Smart'". Los Angeles Times. September 21, 1991. Archived from the original on February 25, 2013. Retrieved September 28, 2012.
  3. ^ "Helen Hunt ancestry". Archived from the original on August 10, 2011. Retrieved October 30, 2011.
  4. ^ Robinson, George (February 13, 2008). "Then She Found Me'". The New York Jewish Week. Archived from the original on January 15, 2009. Retrieved April 24, 2008.
  5. ^ Nick Johnstone, "How Helen Hunt did God" Archived August 17, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, The Jewish Chronicle, August 28, 2008.
  6. ^ "Coffee Talk". October 8, 2018. Archived from the original on July 17, 2019. Retrieved January 27, 2020.
  7. ^ a b c d e f Stated on Inside the Actors Studio, 2001
  8. ^ "HELEN HUNT GOING STRONG". The Morning Call. January 3, 1993.
  9. ^ "Helen Hunt Biography – Yahoo! Movies". Archived from the original on January 14, 2012. Retrieved January 14, 2017.
  10. ^ Cohn, Robert A. (November 7, 2007). "Paul Reiser kicks off book fest". St. Louis Jewish Light. Archived from the original on November 9, 2007. Retrieved November 8, 2007.
  11. ^ "Helen Hunt's Monologue". October 8, 2018. Archived from the original on August 7, 2018. Retrieved January 27, 2020.
  12. ^ Rothstein, Mervyn (June 18, 1998). "Helen Hunt Fulfills a Dream Doing Midsummer Twelfth Night on B'way". Playbill. Archived from the original on February 24, 2019. Retrieved March 8, 2019.
  13. ^ Carter, Bill (March 24, 1998). "THE MEDIA BUSINESS; NBC Signs Deal to Keep 'Mad About You' for Another Season". The New York Times. Retrieved March 24, 2008.
  14. ^ "Rejected Twister 2 Story Killed Off Helen Hunt's Character". Screen Rant. June 14, 2021.
  15. ^ "Twister (1996)". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on June 2, 2019. Retrieved February 23, 2019.
  16. ^ Bona, Damien. Inside Oscar 2, Random House (2002) e-book
  17. ^ Horton, Andrew. Laughing Out Loud: Writing the Comedy-centered Screenplay, Univ. of California Press (2000) p. 64
  18. ^ "As Good as It Gets". Box Office Mojo.
  19. ^ a b Helen Hunt at the Internet Broadway Database
  20. ^ "Pay It Forward". Rotten Tomatoes. Archived from the original on November 29, 2017. Retrieved February 25, 2018.
  21. ^ Ebert, Roger (August 24, 2001). "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001)". Roger Ebert.com. Archived from the original on June 12, 2018. Retrieved February 23, 2019.
  22. ^ "A Good Woman". February 2006. Archived from the original on April 11, 2019. Retrieved February 23, 2019.
  23. ^ "The 13th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards – Screen Actors Guild Awards". Sagawards.org. Archived from the original on December 4, 2012. Retrieved October 11, 2017.
  24. ^ Vivarelli, Nick (December 11, 2023). "Dustin Hoffman, Helen Hunt to Star in Peter Greenaway's Tuscan Drama 'Lucca Mortis'". Variety. Retrieved January 22, 2024.
  25. ^ San Francisco Chronicle, May 2, 2008: Then She Found Me Archived May 4, 2008, at the Wayback Machine Retrieved February 27, 2013
  26. ^ Weitzman, Elizabeth. "'Every Day' review: Richard Levine fails only when it veers away from reality". nydailynews.com. Archived from the original on April 1, 2019. Retrieved February 23, 2019.
  27. ^ "Movie review: 'Every Day'". Los Angeles Times. January 14, 2011.
  28. ^ "Soul Surfer". Box Office Mojo.
  29. ^ Block, Tara. "Helen Hunt". POPSUGAR Love UK. Archived from the original on October 24, 2018. Retrieved October 24, 2018.
  30. ^ McCarthy, Todd (January 23, 2012). "The Surrogate: Sundance Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on January 29, 2012. Retrieved January 29, 2012.
  31. ^ McNary, Dave (December 4, 2013). "Samantha Morton-Helen Hunt's 'Decoding Annie Parker' Gets U.S. Distribution (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Archived from the original on December 19, 2014. Retrieved November 19, 2014.
  32. ^ "Decoding Annie Parker (2014)". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016. Retrieved January 11, 2016.
  33. ^ Souter, Collin (May 2, 2014). "Decoding Annie Parker Movie Review (2014)". Roger Ebert. Archived from the original on May 4, 2017. Retrieved January 5, 2017.
  34. ^ "Ride (2015)". Rotten Tomatoes. Archived from the original on April 28, 2015. Retrieved May 9, 2015.
  35. ^ Berg, Zach (February 15, 2018). "West High volleyball coach hosts 'Miracle Season,' Caroline Found book release party in Iowa City". Iowa City Press Citizen. Retrieved February 17, 2018.
  36. ^ Starr, Michael (March 30, 2020). "Helen Hunt brings trailblazing war journalist to life in 'World on Fire'". New York Post. Retrieved April 22, 2020.
  37. ^ OrlandoSentinel.Com Disney Narrators Include Helen Huntretrieved 08-21-2023
  38. ^ Helen Hunt, Ana de Armas & John Leguizamo Join 'The Night Clerk' Thriller
  39. ^ Otterson, Joe (December 2, 2020). "Helen Hunt joins 'Blindspotting' series at Starz". Variety.
  40. ^ Porter, Rick (December 2, 2020). "Helen Hunt boards 'Blindspotting' series at Starz". The Hollywood Reporter.
  41. ^ "Cast joining Helen Hunt in Old Vic's Eureka Day announced | WhatsOnStage". www.whatsonstage.com. July 29, 2022. Retrieved August 21, 2022.
  42. ^ "Helen Hunt mad about new baby girl". Today. May 21, 2004. Archived from the original on March 8, 2019. Retrieved March 7, 2019.
  43. ^ Johnson, Zach (August 16, 2017). "Helen Hunt and Matthew Carnahan Break Up After 16 Years". E!. Archived from the original on August 18, 2017. Retrieved August 18, 2017.
  44. ^ "Helen Hunt splits from boyfriend Matthew Carnahan after 16 years together". Reality TV World. August 17, 2017. Archived from the original on August 18, 2017. Retrieved August 18, 2017.
  45. ^ Friedman, Megan; Matthews, Lyndsey (January 21, 2017). "Celebrities Hit the Streets for Women's Marches Around the World". Elle. Archived from the original on February 10, 2017. Retrieved January 29, 2017.
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