Helen Hunt - Biography

Helen Elizabeth Hunt (born June 15, 1963) is an American actress, film director, and screenwriter. She starred in the sitcom Mad About You for seven years, before being cast in the romantic comedy As Good as It Gets (for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress). Some of her other Hollywood credits include Twister, Cast Away, What Women Want and Pay It Forward, and Soul Surfer. She made her directorial debut in 2007 with Then She Found Me.

Early life

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. 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. Her Iowa-born maternal grandmother, Dorothy Fries (née Anderson), was a voice coach. 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). Hunt studied ballet, and attended the University of California at Los Angeles.

Career

Hunt began working as a child actress, in the 1970s. Her early roles included an appearance as Murray Slaughter's daughter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, alongside Lindsay Wagner in an episode of The Bionic Woman, and a regular role in the television series The Swiss Family Robinson. She appeared as a marijuana-smoking classmate on an episode of The Facts of Life. Hunt also played a young woman who, while on PCP, jumps out of a second-story window, in a 1982 after school special called Desperate Lives (a scene which she mocked during a Saturday Night Live monologue in 1994). In the mid-1980s, she had a recurring role on St. Elsewhere, as Clancy Williams, girlfriend of Dr. Jack "Boomer" Morrison. She remains well known for one of her earliest roles, as Jennie in the television movie Bill: On His Own, costarring Mickey Rooney. She also starred in the 1985 film Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, with Sarah Jessica Parker and Shannen Doherty.

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. 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. 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.

In 2000, Hunt returned to the screen in four films: Dr. T & the Women, with Richard Gere, Pay It Forward, with Kevin Spacey and Haley Joel Osment, What Women Want, with Mel Gibson, and Cast Away, with Tom Hanks. In 2003, she returned to Broadway in Yasmina Reza's Life x 3. In 2006, Hunt appeared in the ensemble cast film Bobby alongside Demi Moore, Anthony Hopkins, Sharon Stone and William H. Macy.

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.

She currently owns a production company with Connie Tavel, Hunt/Tavel Productions under Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Personal life

Hunt dated actor Hank Azaria for five years, then was married to him from 1999 until 2000. She has been in a relationship with producer/writer/director Matthew Carnahan since 2001 and they have a daughter, Makena Lei Gordon Carnahan, born on May 13, 2004.

Filmography and awards

Hunt has been recognized extensively in her career. In 1998, she became the second actress (after Liza Minnelli) to win a Golden Globe Award, an Academy Award and an Emmy Award in the same year. Hunt was nominated for an Emmy Award for lead actress in a comedy seven years in a row, from 1993 through 1999, winning in the last four years.

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