A complicated romance, a Twister sequel that never happened,
and a passion for theater. Helen Hunt might have stepped out of the spotlight since her
Oscar win in the late 90s — but that doesn’t mean she isn’t living a life that she loves.
Helen Hunt's performance in 1997's As Good As It Gets earned her an
Oscar for Best Actress. While anyone would be lucky to hold such an honor,
the attention the win brought the actor wasn't quite to her liking.
"I don't quite get how that's a complement for me."
Reflecting on the time after the film came out, Hunt told The Guardian,
"I felt quite nervous because I was being followed. I remember thinking,
'What if I can't turn this off? Am I always going to be walking to my car
and there are people with cameras there? Does this last forever?'"
After the success of As Good As It Gets, she appeared in a few television projects before
taking a short break from acting altogether. When she returned to the screen in 2000,
she was very selective about the projects she took on. She chose to focus on indie
films and passion projects, and kept an eye out for exactly the right roles. As she told
Cinema.com, her success in As Good As It Gets left her a lot to live up to,
and she wanted to ensure that her follow-up would be just as high quality.
As Hunt told Female.com.au, she was unsure exactly what the future would hold after her Oscar win,
but she ended her short break with quite a bang. Plenty of incredible
projects came to her in short order, and though she may have craved more time off,
some of them were too good to pass up. She told Cinema.com,
"For years I dreamed of having the kind of career where I could work with the best in the business,
and now that I had the opportunity, I didn't have the guts to turn any of the films down."
She wasn't kidding. In the space of just one year,
she appeared in Robert Altman's Dr. T & the Women alongside Richard Gere and Farrah Fawcett,
Pay It Forward with Kevin Spacey, Cast Away with Tom Hanks, and What Women Want with Mel Gibson.
After another busy year, Hunt once again shied away from the spotlight. Between 2001 and 2004,
she took another break from screen acting. As she told Vulture in 2011,
"Movie acting is a great job for your twenties: You travel all over,
you have affairs with people, and you throw yourself into one part
and then another. It gets more challenging as you get older."
Between 2004 and 2010, she appeared in just four films and one TV show.
"Jesus."
It was around this time she also began making forays into directing. Hunt told
The Times she had been enamored by work behind-the-camera for years,
as she found it just as important as acting for telling a good story.
She made her feature directorial debut with 2007's Then She Found Me,
and followed it up with 2014's Ride. She has also directed episodes of numerous TV shows,
including Californication, House of Lies, This Is Us, Feud: Bette and Joan, and The Politician.
In 2012, she revealed to the Santa Monica Mirror,
"I love directing. It's probably closer to my personality. You're sitting here like this
solving problems. You're not naked in front of a bunch of strangers pouring your heart out."
In 2004, Helen Hunt and Director Matthew Carnahan welcomed their daughter,
Makena Lei. Naturally, Hunt's priorities shifted pretty heavily with the birth of
her child. She told The Guardian she began spending more and more time with her family,
and continued to withdraw from the public eye by working less and less.
Of course, as her daughter got a bit older, Hunt felt more comfortable taking on roles. Though in
her typical fashion, Hunt continued to be very selective about the roles she pursued, as it would
mean leaving her daughter for extended periods of time. She told the Santa Monica Mirror in 2012,
"My daughter is eight now, so I feel that's different. I'm working quite a
bit and that didn't feel right when she was six."
Even though Hunt kept working, she was still a hands-on mother,
driving her daughter to and from school whenever she could. In fact, in a 2018
episode of Live With Kelly and Ryan, she admitted her daughter hadn't even seen her acting work.
"I have never found the right moment to say,
'Drop your homework and your painting and watch me on TV.'"
Helen Hunt's acting career may have slowed down in the 2000s, but it certainly didn't stop
altogether. In fact, in 2012, she starred opposite John Hawkes and William H. Macy in The Sessions.
The film was a critical smash hit and her performance received rave reviews. She
played a married woman who agrees to be a sex surrogate for a man who, due to an illness,
had never had sex. Hunt had to do a fair amount of nudity for the film, which, though daunting at
first, was something she took on with her typical professionalism. In fact, according to USA Today,
director Ben Lewin publicly praised the actor for her respectful approach to filming nude scenes.
Hunt ended up receiving an Oscar nomination for the role, though at the time,
she didn't seem too concerned. In fact, her main focus continued to be her daughter.
During one interview with the Independent, she actually spent the whole time knitting
a doll for Makena. When asked if she was ready to go through awards season again, she replied,
"I don't have any control over it. Look, I'm knitting as fast as I can!"
In 2017, Helen Hunt and her partner Matthew Carnahan split up after 16 years together.
According to InTouch Weekly, the breakup was fairly complicated and contentious. Reportedly,
Hunt ended the relationship due to suspicions she had that Carnahan had broken her trust,
despite the latter's insistence he was innocent of any secretive transgressions.
However, another source claimed that the couple had been on rocky ground for years, saying,
"Matthew moved out a few times over the years. Helen would always take him back,
and then time would pass and she'd kick him out again."
Apparently, the pair had mainly stayed together for so long for the sake of their daughter,
Makena Lei. Several years later, Hunt appeared to be playing the field once again,
with Closer Weekly reporting that she was in another serious relationship as of 2020.
Another reason why Helen Hunt has become a less frequent fixture on our screens is that she's
spent more of her time working in theaters and attending plays. In the time since her Oscar win,
she's appeared in productions of Much Ado About Nothing and Our Town. In 2003,
she also appeared in Life x 3 alongside fellow big-screen star, Marisa Tomei.
In 2012, Hunt told the Santa Monica Mirror about her love of acting on stage. She explained,
"There is something that happens in that room that is out of control and unpredictable,
especially when I did Our Town and was addressing
300 people just like I'm talking to you guys, for page after page."
In another interview with Sarasota Magazine, Hunt revealed that Our Town was her favorite
project to date. She told the publication that she performed in two productions of the play in two
different cities, and that she would happily jump on the opportunity to act in it again.
Hunt has continued acting on stage over the years. In 2019,
she made her musical theater debut with the play Working in California. In 2022,
Hunt did her first play in England, appearing in Eureka Day at the Old Vic Theater in London.
After several decades of relative privacy, Helen Hunt took on one of her biggest roles in
years with the STARZ comedy Blindspotting. Hunt reportedly landed the role almost by accident
when, after watching the film that inspired the show, she tweeted about how much she enjoyed it.
As Hunt recalled to Collider, this praise soon snowballed into a collaboration. She explained,
"[The team] saw that and commented on my tweet,
and I commented, and we messaged, and the next thing you know,
I was with these guys and we were talking about how much we'd like to make something together."
They all worked on the idea during the pandemic and eventually, the show was picked up by STARZ.
For Hunt, the project was a dream come true. She gushed on The Kelly Clarkson Show about how
passionate she was for the material, calling the series a "bouquet of joy and beauty."
One of Helen Hunt's earliest hits was Twister, the 1996 film about two
storm chasers. Apparently, Hunt wanted to create a sequel to the film decades later.
According to The Guardian, Hunt and her Blindspotting collaborator Daveed Diggs
imagined a sequel with a more racially inclusive cast than the original. Even though both Hunt
and Diggs are well-known in the industry, no one was interested. Hunt told The Guardian,
"It was literally July 2020. The United States was on fire with the beginning of a 400-year
overdue racial reckoning; and #MeToo hadn't been that long ago. There were three of us,
each representing a minority of our own,
one of us having starred in the [original] movie and we couldn't get a meeting."
In both show business and day to day life, Hunt has become more vocal about her own
political standing. In 2018, Hunt appeared in a campaign video for the Democratic party
encouraging everyone to vote, and she's echoed that sentiment on her Instagram regularly. She
has also been a vocal advocate for the Black Lives Matter movement and publicly opposed Donald Trump.
As of 2023, Helen Hunt is still busy — but she's managed to avoid the trappings
of fame and continues to maintain a fairly casual lifestyle. Reflecting
on her ability to step back from stardom, she told The Guardian,
"There are some people who will live more exciting lives and keep going at
that level — and it's their whole life, wherever they go, forever."
Unlike other stars, Hunt doesn't lead a glamorous life filled with premieres and
Hollywood parties. In fact, more often than not,
she enjoys watching movies in her local cinema just like everyone else. Despite
the fact that her film industry connections could probably get her into any screening she wanted,
she told Vulture she prefers to purchase popcorn at the counter and enjoy movies the old way.
When she isn't at the movie theater, she's probably at home watching baseball,
or hanging with her family. It's pretty remarkable to see how the Oscar winner's life has shaken out!