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Quick Facts
- NAME: Helen Hunt
- OCCUPATION: Film Actress, Television Actress
- BIRTH DATE: June 15, 1963 (Age: 50)
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Culver City, California
- ZODIAC SIGN: Gemini
Best Known For
Helen Hunt in an Emmy and Academy Award-winning actress best known for her roles in the sitcom Mad About You and the film As Good As It Gets.
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Helen Hunt - As Good as it Gets
Watch a short video about Helen Hunt and find out how this actress born into a family of entertainers worked her way up to winning an Academy Award.
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Play NowHelen Hunt. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 12:45, Jun 20, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/helen-hunt-9542341.
Helen Hunt. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/helen-hunt-9542341 [Accessed 20 Jun 2013].
"Helen Hunt." 2013. The Biography Channel website. Jun 20 2013, 12:45 http://www.biography.com/people/helen-hunt-9542341.
"Helen Hunt," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/helen-hunt-9542341 [accessed Jun 20, 2013].
"Helen Hunt," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/helen-hunt-9542341 (accessed Jun 20, 2013).
Helen Hunt [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 Jun 20] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/helen-hunt-9542341.
Helen Hunt, http://www.biography.com/people/helen-hunt-9542341 (last visited Jun 20, 2013).
Helen Hunt. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/helen-hunt-9542341. Accessed Jun 20, 2013.
Synopsis
Helen Hunt was born on June 15, 1963, in Culver City, California. Her first role was at age 9 in the 1973 TV movie, Pioneer Woman. Hunt later appeared in the acclaimed medical drama St. Elsewhere and starred opposite Paul Reiser in the sitcom Mad About You, for which she won four Emmys. In 1996, Hunt starred in the box-office hit Twister and in 1997 she won the Best Actress Academy Award for As Good As It Gets.
Early Career
Actress Helen Hunt was born on June 15, 1963, in Culver City, California. The daughter of Gordon Hunt, an acting coach and theater director, and Jane Hunt, a photographer, Hunt grew up in Los Angeles and New York. She decided on an acting career early: by age 9, she had begun studying drama, had an agent and had landed a role in the 1973 television movie Pioneer Woman.
After appearing as an adolescent in such TV series as Amy Prentiss (1974-75), Swiss Family Robinson (1975-76), The Fitzpatricks (1977-78) and It Takes Two (1982-83), Hunt found a recurring role on the medical melodrama St. Elsewhere in 1982. She also earned acclaim for her role in the 1983 TV movie Quarterback Princess, in which she played a high school girl bent on leading her school’s otherwise all-male football team to the state championships.
Breakthrough Role
Hunt made her feature film debut in 1977 with the forgettable film Rollercoaster. Before long, she had supporting roles in such films as Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985) starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) starring Kathleen Turner and Nicolas Cage, The Waterdance (1992) starring Eric Stoltz and Mr. Saturday Night (1992) starring Billy Crystal. Hunt first earned star status for her role as smart urban career woman and wife Jamie Buchman on the much-loved TV sitcom Mad About You. Over the course of the show's seven seasons (1992-'99), Hunt won four consecutive Emmy Awards from 1996-99 and became one of America’s best loved television couples with costar Paul Reiser.
Big Screen Success
Hunt's hard work and small-screen stardom finally translated to big-screen success in the latter half of the 1990s. In 1996, she starred opposite Bill Paxton in the summer action blockbuster Twister, which became one of the top-grossing movies of that year. A year later, she won acclaim from both critics and audiences - along with an Academy Award for Best Actress - for her star turn as a long-suffering single mother and waitress alongside Best Actor winner Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets (1997), written and directed by James L. Brooks.
Although her Oscar win sent Hunt straight to Hollywood's A-list, she made her next starring appearance on stage, playing the androgynously charming Viola in an acclaimed 1998 production of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. In 2000, she returned to the big screen with several long-awaited efforts, including Pay It Forward, costarring Kevin Spacey and Haley Joel Osment; What Women Want, costarring Mel Gibson; Dr.
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