Helen Hunt

Helen Elizabeth Hunt, born June 15, 1963, in Culver City, California, is an American actress whose career spans television, film, and Broadway. Her father, Gordon Hunt, worked as a film, voice, and stage director and acting coach, while her mother, Jane Elizabeth Hunt, was a photographer. Her uncle, Peter H. Hunt, was also a director, and her maternal grandmother, Dorothy Fries, worked as a voice coach. Hunt's paternal grandmother came from a German-Jewish family, and her other grandparents were of English descent with a Methodist background. When Hunt was three, the family relocated to New York City, where her father directed theatre and Hunt attended plays regularly as a child. She later graduated from Providence High School in Burbank, California, studied ballet, and briefly enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Hunt began her professional acting career as a child in the 1970s, taking on roles across multiple television series. Early credits included an appearance on the family drama Family in 1976, a guest role on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1977, and a regular part in The Swiss Family Robinson. She also appeared on St. Elsewhere in a recurring role as Clancy Williams, the girlfriend of Jack Morrison, played by David Morse. By the early 1980s, she had taken on lead roles in television films, including Bill: On His Own alongside Mickey Rooney in 1983 and the fact-based production Quarterback Princess the same year. Her first significant film role came in the science-fiction feature Trancers in 1984, in which she played a punk rock girl. Subsequent film appearances through the mid-to-late 1980s included Girls Just Want to Have Fun in 1985 with Sarah Jessica Parker and Shannen Doherty, Francis Ford Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married in 1986 alongside Kathleen Turner, and Project X in 1987 opposite Matthew Broderick, in which she played a graduate student assigned to care for chimpanzees in a secret Air Force project. In 1988, the same year she began her Broadway career, Hunt appeared in Stealing Home as Hope Wyatt alongside Mark Harmon and Jodie Foster.

Hunt's Broadway career ran from 1988 to 2003 and included three productions. She appeared in a staging of Shakespeare's comedy Twelfth Night, the drama Our Town, and the play Life (x) 3. Her stage work overlapped with a period of significant television and film activity. In 1990, she appeared alongside Tracey Ullman and Morgan Freeman in a Wild West adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, and in 1998 she played Viola in a production of Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center in New York.

Hunt rose to widespread prominence beginning in 1992 with the NBC sitcom Mad About You, in which she starred opposite Paul Reiser as a public relations specialist who is one half of a married couple living in New York City. The series ran until 1999, and Hunt earned four Primetime Emmy Awards for Lead Actress for her performance, winning in 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999. She also received three Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress for the role. During the show's final season, Hunt and Reiser each earned one million dollars per episode. Hunt also directed several episodes of the series, including the finale, and later directed the premiere episode of the Mad About You revival in 2019.

Her film career gained considerable momentum during the same period. The disaster film Twister in 1996, in which she starred with Bill Paxton as storm chasers researching tornadoes, became the second-highest-grossing film of that year, earning approximately 494.5 million dollars worldwide. The following year, Hunt won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in As Good as It Gets, playing a waitress and single mother opposite Jack Nicholson's obsessive-compulsive romance novelist. The film grossed 314 million dollars worldwide. In 2000, Hunt appeared in four films, including the drama Pay It Forward, in which she played the love interest of a grade school teacher portrayed by Kevin Spacey, and the comedy What Women Want alongside Mel Gibson. Cast Away, also released in 2000, further extended her film profile.

Hunt made her feature directorial debut with Then She Found Me in 2007 and directed the film Ride in 2014. As a director she also helmed episodes of House of Lies in 2016, This Is Us in 2016, Feud: Bette and Joan in 2017, and American Housewife in 2018. Her acting work continued with notable roles in Bobby in 2006, Soul Surfer in 2011, and The Sessions in 2012, in which she portrayed Cheryl Cohen-Greene. That performance earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Additional film credits include The Miracle Season in 2018. Across her career, Hunt's accolades include one Academy Award, four Primetime Emmy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards.