Helen Hunt Profile

03 July 2008

0Comments | Comment on this Article

Helen Hunt is an Academy Award winning actress who has found success on television the big screen and in the theatre. This week, with the release of Then She Found Me, she makes her movie directorial debut.

Hunt came a very strong acting back ground as her father and uncle were directors and her grandmother a voice coach. She began her career as a child actress appearing in The Mary Tyler Moore Show and television series Swiss Family Robinson.

She moved into movies both for television and the silver screen and her breakthrough came in 1996 when she starred in disaster film Twister with Bill Paxton.

Twister chronicles one day in the life of a band of gung-ho "storm chasers," who track and follow twisters and tornadoes.

The group, led by the gutsy Jo and her macho, soon-to-be-ex Bill, have invented "Dorothy," a tank containing sensors that can provide much-needed info about these mysterious, severe weather conditions.

But in order for Dorothy to work, she first must be swallowed by a twister. So Jo, Bill, and the gang put their lives on the line innumerable times, as getting close to the storm means dodging everything from windswept cattle to flying oil tankers.

For Jo and Bill in particular, making meteorological history means having firsthand experience of the inside of a twister...

But by this time she had found success in television comedy series Mad About You.

The show was based on newlyweds Paul Buchman (Paul Reiser) and Jamie Stemple Buchman (Hunt) as they tackled everyday issues.

For her role in the show, which ended in 1999, she was nominated for a Best Actress Emmy seven years in a row, 1993-1999, winning the last four, the only actress to win four consecutive awards. She also won three Golden Globes.

In 1997 she joined Helen Mirren and Liza Minnelli as only the third actress to win an Emmy, Golden Globe and Academy Award in the same year when she bagged the Best Actress oScar for her role as Carol Connelly in As Good as it Gets.

Acerbic and outwardly despicable pulp novelist Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson) lives in a haze of obsessive-compulsive behaviour patterns, avoiding cracks in the sidewalk and rigidly adhering to his regimen of daily breakfasts in the cafe where harried single mom Carol Connelly (Hunt) is the only waitress he'll accept.

But his ordered, hermetic world falls apart when his neighbour, a gay painter, needs a babysitter for his cherished dog, and only his long-time nemesis Melvin will do.

Then, when the waitress's son's serious illness keeps her from work, Melvin realizes how much he needs her after all.

The film was nominated for six other Oscar, including Best Picture, but only Jack Nicholson won for his performance.

After her win Hunt left movies as she landed the role of Viola in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in New York.

She returned with four films in 2000 the most successful of these being What Women Want with Mel Gibson.

The film grossed over $374 million at the global box office and remains the biggest grossing movie directed by a woman, Nancy Meyers.

Her new movie Then She Found Me sees her take on numerous roles as director, producer, writer and star.

Adapted from Elinor Lipman’s novel of the same name, Helen Hunt makes her feature directing debut with Then She Found Me, a touching story of schoolteacher April Epner (Hunt) and her very unlikely path towards personal fulfillment.

Following the separation from her husband (Matthew Broderick) and the death of her adopted mother, April is contacted by her apparent birth month (Bette Midler), who turns out to be a local talk show host Bernice Graves.

As Bernice tries to become the mother to April that she was never able to be, April seems to find solace in the arms of the parent of one of her students (Colin Firth), only to find that the mystery to life’s questions cannot be solved by a simple revelation.

Then She Found Me is released 4th July.

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw

0Comments | Be the first to comment!