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Helen Hunt
at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival
Born	Helen Elizabeth Hunt
Occupation(s)	actor, director
Years active	1973–present
Spouse(s)	Hank Azaria (1999-2000)
Partner	Matthew Carnahan (2001-present)

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. She made her directorial debut in 2008 with Then She Found Me.

Early life

Hunt was born in Culver City, California, the daughter of Jane Elizabeth (née Novis), a photographer, and Gordon Hunt, a film director and acting coach. Her uncle, Peter H. Hunt, is also a director, and her maternal grandmother, Dorothy Fries (née Anderson) was a voice coach. Hunt is of Jewish (from her paternal grandmother) and Methodist background. She spent part of her childhood in New York City and later attended the University of California at Los Angeles.

Career

Hunt began working in the 1970s as a child actress. 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. She also appeared as 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 best known for one of her earliest roles as Jennie in Bill: On His Own, costarring Mickey Rooney.

In the 1990s, after the lead female role in the short-lived My Life and Times, Hunt became well-known to television audiences in Mad About You, winning Emmy Awards for her performance in 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999. Hunt has also had a successful film career, with roles in movies such as Cast Away and the 1996 blockbuster Twister.

In 1998 Hunt won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Carol Connelly, a waitress and single mother who finds herself falling in love with Melvin Udall, an obsessive-compulsive romance novelist played by Jack Nicholson in the movie As Good as It Gets. After winning the Academy Award she took several years off from movie work to play Viola in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center in New York City.

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. Hunt was also a final candidate for the role of "Clarice Starling" in Hannibal, after Jodie Foster decided not to reprise her Oscar winning role from The Silence of the Lambs. However, Hunt lost the role to Julianne Moore at the last minute. In 2006, Hunt appeared in a small role in the film Bobby.

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.

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. Then she briefly dated fellow actor Kevin Spacey in 2000. She has been in a relationship with Matthew Carnahan since 2001 and they have a daughter, Makena Lei Gordon Carnahan, born in 2004.

Filmography and awards

Helen Hunt has been recognized extensively in her career. In 1998 she joined Liza Minnelli and Helen Mirren as the three actresses 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. She is the only actress to have won four consecutive Emmys and four Blockbuster Entertainment Awards.

Television

Films

References

1. ^ Helen Hunt at the TCM Movie Database
2. Helen Hunt genealogy. Rootsweb.com.
3. Helen Hunt biography. Film Reference.com.
4. Robinson, George (2008-02-13). "Then She Found Me'". The New York Jewish Week. Retrieved 2008-04-24. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
5. Cohn, Robert A. (2007-11-07). "Paul Reiser kicks off book fest". St. Louis Jewish Light. Retrieved 2007-11-08. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
6. Helen Hunt Biography - Yahoo! Movies
7. Helen Hunt's Monologue
8. ^ Helen Hunt at the Internet Broadway Database
9. "Helen Hunt dating Kevin Spacey".
10. Helen Hunt: It's a Girl!, a May 2004 E! Online article (Error in Webarchive template: Empty url.)
11. ^ Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Emmys.com.

External links

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• Living people
• Deaths
• American child actors
• American film actors
• American television actors
• American stage actors
• Actors from California
• Shakespearean actors
• Americans of Jewish descent
• Best Actress Academy Award winners
• Best Musical or Comedy Actress Golden Globe (film) winners
• Best Musical or Comedy Actress Golden Globe (television) winners
• California State University, Northridge alumni
• Emmy Award winners
• People from Los Angeles County, California