Helen Hunt has played a young sitcom wife, single-mom waitresses, a castaway's bereft girlfriend and a chauvinist's foil. No matter the role, Hunt always plays someone to whom a wide swath of moviegoers can relate. She's the woman next door, with an edge.
Her profile was highest about 10 years ago. She and co-star Paul Reiser each earned $1 million an episode for the 1999 final season of the popular sitcom "Mad About You."
After winning an Oscar for playing the single-mom waitress whom Jack Nicholson falls for in 1997's "As Good as It Gets," she played opposite Hollywood powerhouses Tom Hanks, Kevin Spacey and Mel Gibson in films that all came out in 2000.
So where's she been lately? Working, she says, just not as often. Hunt, who will be 47 in June, has a 6-year-old daughter with her partner, Matthew Carnahan, a TV writer and producer. She's speaking in Minneapolis on Monday as part of the "SmartTalk ConnectedConversations" series.
Two years ago, Hunt directed, co-wrote and starred in the dramedy "Then She Found Me," a pet project 10 years in the making. Hunt plays April, a teacher nearing 40 with baby fever who gets distracted because her husband leaves her, her adoptive mother dies and her birth mother (Bette Midler) suddenly shows up. Reviews were not so much mixed as divided -- critics either really liked it or really didn't.
Since then, the indie film "Every Day," in which Hunt plays a woman juggling a fraying marriage with other family crises, has been received well at recent film festivals. She just finished shooting "Soul Surfer," playing the mother of a character based on real-life surfer Bethany Hamilton, who went back out on her board after losing an arm to a shark.
Q Do you surf?
A I just started about six years ago. That and playing the guitar were two things I always wanted to do, but I was working too much in my earlier life. With surfing, you really just have to get out there and be willing to be humiliated.
