The secret life of Helen Hunt

The secret life of Helen Hunt
Her debut film as writer-director brings up many burning issues worth discussing - but Helen Hunt is playing hard to get. So what is really on the award-winning actor's mind? By Hadley Freeman

o Hadley Freeman
o The Guardian,
o Friday September 5 2008

It's bright and early and Helen Hunt is doing yoga in her London hotel room. Well, what else do you expect of a Hollywood actor who has a spare 10 minutes? As she solemnly bends over to the side, wearing some loose combat trousers, a cotton vest and cardigan, she looks every inch the California cliche, lacking only an egg-white omelette and soya skinny latte on the coffee table.

Well, sort of. On the surface, Hunt does seem like just another American star: blonde, thin, been in a few very successful movies (Twister, As Good As It Gets, What Women Want) and the requisite Woody Allen disaster (Curse of the Jade Scorpion). But a second glance suggests something a little more. For a start, Hunt has been acting since she was nine but has never succumbed either to public hedonism or the belief that the only life worth living is one lived in front of the paparazzi. Instead, she has spent the past 30 years living and working quietly in LA. Perhaps connected to that, she is also a genuinely good actor: her Oscar in 1998 for As Good As It Gets may have sparked some grumbles in this country (as was widely noted, she was the only American on an otherwise entirely British list of best actress nominees) but her subtle, smart acting elevated her potentially two-dimensional role as Jack Nicholson's unlikely love interest into something more interesting, conveying need without sinking into neediness.

Hunt was born and raised in Los Angeles. Her father was an acting coach and she started acting as a child, mainly on TV. "I loved it. I remember being very sad when a job would end as I'd made all these nice friends who would then disappear, but other than that it was fun," she says. Would she let her daughter act? "Certainly not early on." She worked steadily throughout her 20s before really hitting the mainstream in Twister when she was 33.

Hunt is probably best known in this country for As Good as it Gets, but in the US it was the hugely successful sitcom Mad About You that made her name. She won four Emmy awards for it and is only the third actress ever to win an Oscar, a Golden Globe and an Emmy in one year, alongside Helen Mirren and Liza Minnelli. She now keeps her Oscar on a shelf above her desk "so if there's another earthquake in California I'll be killed by my own Academy award".

It was during this awards snowstorm that Hunt had her first experience of being followed around by the paparazzi. How did that make her feel? "Vulnerable. But if you want it to go away, it will, you just have to be patient." Is there not a pressure to try to stay in the public eye to further a career, and does it make it harder for women if this pressure exists? "I don't know."

Despite such critical success, Hunt has hardly been a major screen presence in the past decade. Has she been disappointed by her post-Oscar career? "I don't know, I didn't really have any expectations. They say it gives you a little more juice for the first year and that's it. It certainly didn't help me get this movie made."

Certainly, her new film shows a willingness to take a risk. Then She Found Me is Hunt's writing and directing debut. It tells the story of April, played by Hunt, a 39-year-old teacher, desperate to have a baby, even though her husband (Matthew Broderick) has just left. She has just started dating the father (Colin Firth) of one of her students when a blowsy TV talkshow host (Bette Midler) turns up claiming to be her birth mother, and wanting to make amends for having given April up for adoption all those years ago. It's a slight, often self-conscious movie, but clearly a labour of love for Hunt, who spent more than a decade trying to get it made. Despite that, she does a good job of pretending she couldn't care less now. Answers to even the most innocuous questions about the movie are made in a nervy monotone, as if fearful of traps or slips.

This is a shame, because there is much to discuss about the movie, involving as it does infidelities, the desire of an older woman to have a baby (Hunt herself had a daughter three years ago when she was 40) and - I swear I am not making this bit up - Salman Rushdie playing an obstetrician. You have never seen a classic cinematic moment until you've seen Rushdie squirt gel on to Helen Hunt's swollen belly, watched dewy-eyed by Matthew Broderick and Colin Firth. Didn't she worry that Rushdie's presence might prove something of a distraction for audiences? "I wasn't, maybe I should have. I think maybe it's a bigger deal here than in the US. I don't even know what it means to people," she replies with a bit of a rueful laugh, clearly a bit tired of having to explain why she cast a writer who once had a fatwa on his head to give her a sonogram. "I just wanted an Indian actor for the part and he auditioned and he was just better than everyone else."

But if Rushdie is surprising casting, then Broderick, whom Hunt dated several years ago, is even more eyebrow-raising. He plays the selfish ex-husband whose uselessness in life is paralleled by his premature ejaculations in bed. So how did her ex-boyfriend react when she said she wanted him for this part? "Um, we didn't really talk about it on that level, he just liked the movie and the, um, part," she says, looking down.

Unfortunately, the film is somewhat like Hunt: clearly well-intentioned but, my goodness, you wish there was a hint of a sense of humour sometimes, or even just the courage to commit to a point of view. One of the key moments of the film is when April, determined to know why she was given up for adoption, finally forces her mother to admit, "I wanted a life more than I wanted you." Is that a negative thing to admit? There is a long pause. "I guess it could be seen as that," she quietly replies.

Such hedging is surprising, considering her reputation as one of Hollywood's more high-profile, campaigning liberals, along with Sean Penn and Tim Robbins. That led to her being satirised in Team America: World Police, the 2004 movie by the team behind South Park, as a blinkered do-gooder. But perhaps such satirisation explains her nervy shyness today. When asked why actors who make political statements are parodied, she won't even let me finish the sentence, blurting out, "I don't know, I don't care." All she'll say about the current election is that she hasn't been involved except "as a hopeful voter".

She is similarly reluctant to answer more general questions that hardly seem contentious. One of the most commendable features in the movie is Hunt's lack of vanity: moviegoers are so used to icily Botoxed faces that to see Hunt's feathered and lined one is almost a shock. She shoots it in close up so many times that it's hard not to think she's making a point. Isn't there a huge pressure on actresses to pretend that ageing is something that just happens to the little people or those who don't try hard enough? "Um, I don't think I've ever felt that really, no." Really? "Well, maybe there is, I don't know."

Was part of the motivation to make this movie the dearth of good roles for women over 25 in Hollywood? "Um, well, I'm sure if I had five great roles lined up then I wouldn't have had time to write this movie. But I do know in the past, when I haven't been making movie after movie, I haven't been going to the movies and seeing other parts I'd like to have played. So while it would have been nice to have had more ..." she pauses for a slow beat of five - "... opportunities, I'm not really sure if they were out there to have." And with that, she quickly stops, as though startled she may have allowed herself to make a point.

· Then She Found Me is released on September 19