Helen Hunt made her splash in the mid-1990s with the NBC series Mad About You, a kind of homage to late-baby-boom couplehood. After appearing in several TV roles in the '80s, she moved into feature films, including Francis Ford Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married (1986, with Nicolas Cage) and Bob Roberts (1992). Her success on TV in the '90s led to higher profile movies, including a starring role in As Good As It Gets (1997, with Jack Nicholson), for which she won an Oscar. Her other films include Dr. T and the Women (2000, with Richard Gere), Cast Away (2000, with Tom Hanks), What Women Want (2000, with Mel Gibson) and Woody Allen's The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion (2001).
Hunt once appeared as Gavin MacLeod's daughter on TheMary Tyler MooreShow.
"I know for me the subject of how to be in a relationship is precious and complicated and challenging. It wouldn't be right to make it look too easy. [On her approach to Mad About You]"
A precociously talented youngster, Helen Hunt was drawing paychecks as a television actress from the age of ten. Before she was 17, she had appeared as a regular on two series, Swiss Family Robinson (1975) and The Fitzpatricks (1977). Hunt proved she was more than just a workaday child actor with her starring performance in the fact-based 1981 TV movie The Miracle of Kathy Miller, in which she played a high school athlete who overcame severe mental and physical damage brought on by a highway accident.
While she had been appearing in films as early as Rollercoaster in 1977, Hunt was never groomed as a star player, and it is possible that her resemblance to another child actress, Jodie Foster, held her back from more important roles.
After taking on her first adult role in the 1982 sitcom It Takes Two, Hunt's film assignments improved, with sizable roles in Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Project X (1987), Next of Kin (1989), and The Waterdance (1991). She also gained a small measure of cult status by appearing in a brace of science fiction films, including Trancers II (1991) and Trancers III (1992). That same year, Hunt landed her longest-lasting acting assignment to date, as the co-star of the Paul Reiser-created comedy series Mad About You. During the show's seven-year run, she won both Emmy and Golden Globe awards for her portrayal of Jamie Buchman. In 1996, Hunt had her most successful film role to date in the blockbuster Twister. The following year, she topped that when she received a Best Actress Oscar for playing a caring waitress and single mother who befriends acerbic, obsessive-compulsive author Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson, who also won an Oscar for his performance) in As Good As It Gets. After Mad About You ended in 1999, Hunt appeared in films by several veteran directors, including Robert Zemeckis (Cast Away [2000]), Robert Altman (Dr. T and The Women [2000]), and Woody Allen (The Curse of the Jade Scorpion [2001]). She starred in Life x 3 on Broadway in 2003. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Hunt was born in Culver City, California. Her mother, Jane Elizabeth (née Novis), worked as a photographer, and her father, Gordon E. Hunt, is a film director and acting coach.[1] Her uncle, Peter H. Hunt, is also a director. Her paternal grandmother was from a German Jewish family, and her maternal grandfather was born in England.[2][3] Her Iowa-born maternal grandmother, Dorothy Fries (née Anderson), was a voice coach.[4] When she was three, Hunt's family moved to New York City, where her father directed theatre (Hunt attended plays as a child several times a week).[5] Hunt studied ballet, and attended the University of California at Los Angeles.[5][6][7]
In the 1990s, after playing the lead female role in the short-lived My Life and Times, Hunt became well-known to television audiences for starring in the series Mad About You, winning Emmy Awards for her performance in 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999.[5] In 1998, Hunt won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Carol Connelly in the movie As Good as It Gets; the character was a waitress and single mother who finds herself falling in love with Melvin Udall, an obsessive-compulsive romance novelist played by Jack Nicholson.[5] After winning the Academy Award, she took time off from movie work to play Viola in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, at Lincoln Center in New York.[9]
Hunt is a director, having helmed several episodes of Mad About You, including the series finale. Her big-screen directorial debut came with the film Then She Found Me, in which she also starred, with Colin Firth and Matthew Broderick.[1]
Hunt was married to actor Hank Azaria from 1999 until 2000.[1] She has been in a relationship with producer/writer/director Matthew Carnahan since 2001. They have a daughter, Makena Lei Gordon Carnahan, born on May 13, 2004.[1][10]
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