Helen Elizabeth Hunt is an American actress, film director, and screenwriter.
She starred in the sitcom Mad About You for seven years before being cast as single mother
Carol Connelly in the 1997 romantic comedy film, As Good as It Gets for which she won
the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Some of her other notable films include Twister, Cast Away, What Women Want, Pay It Forward,
Soul Surfer and The Sessions.
She made her directorial debut in 2007 with Then She Found Me.
In addition to her Oscar, Hunt has won four Emmy awards, four Golden Globe awards, and
two Screen Actors Guild awards.
Early life Hunt was born in Culver City, California.
Her mother, Jane Elizabeth, 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 Iowa-born maternal grandmother, Dorothy Fries, was a voice coach.
Hunt's paternal grandmother was from a German Jewish family, while Hunt's other grandparents
were of English descent.
When she was three, Hunt's family moved to New York City, where her father directed theatre.
Hunt studied ballet, and briefly attended UCLA.
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, an appearance
in an episode of Ark II called Omega, 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 TV movie called Desperate Lives.
That same year, Hunt was cast on the ABC sitcom It Takes Two, which lasted a single season.
In the mid-1980s, she had a recurring role on St. Elsewhere as Clancy Williams, the girlfriend
of Dr. Jack "Boomer" Morrison.
She played Jennie in the television movie Bill: On His Own, co-starring 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 starred in the series Mad About You, winning Emmy Awards for her performances in
1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999.
Hunt directed 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.
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 is 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 starred 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.
In 2012, she starred alongside John Hawkes and William H. Macy in The Sessions as sex
surrogate Cheryl Cohen-Greene.
The movie and her performance were very well reviewed and earned her several award nominations,
including an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
She owns a production company with Connie Tavel, Hunt/Tavel Productions under Sony Pictures
Entertainment.
Personal life Hunt started dating actor Hank Azaria in 1994
and they married in 1999, only to get divorced 17 months later.
She has been in a relationship with producerdirector Matthew Carnahan since 2001.
They have a daughter, Makena Lei Gordon Carnahan, born on May 13, 2004.
Filmography
Accolades Hunt has been recognized extensively in her
career.
In 1998 she won 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.
References
External links Helen Hunt at the Internet Movie Database
Helen Hunt at the Internet Broadway Database Helen Hunt at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
Helen Hunt at AllMovie