Helen Hunt

Helen Hunt
Image:Helen Hunt.jpg Helen Hunt at the premiere of Cast Away
Birth name	Helen Elizabeth Hunt
Born	June 15 1963 (age 45) Culver City,California, United States
Spouse(s)	Hank Azaria (1999-2000)
Awards Academy Awards Best Actress 1998 As Good as It Gets Emmy Awards Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999 Mad About You

Helen Elizabeth Hunt (born June 15, 1963) is an Emmy, Golden Globe and Academy Award-winning American actress, perhaps best known for her role in the television sitcom Mad About You.

Biography

Early life

Hunt was born in Culver City, California to Gordon Hunt, a film director and acting coach, and Jane Elizabeth Novis, a photographer. Her maternal grandmother, Dorothy Fries (born Dorothy Anderson) was a voice coach. Hunt is of Methodist and Jewish background.^[1]

Career

Hunt showed an interest in acting as a child and began her career in the 1970s as a child actress. Her early roles included an appearance as Murray Slaughter's daughter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, 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 memorably 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. In the mid-1980s, she had a recurring role on St. Elsewhere as Clancy Williams, girlfriend of Dr. Jack "Boomer" Morrison.

In the 1990s, Hunt became well-known to television audiences as co-star of sitcom Mad About You with screen partner Paul Reiser, winning Emmy Awards for her performance in 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999. By the end of the show in 1999, Hunt was the highest-paid TV actress in history, earning $1 million per episode.

Hunt has also had a successful film career and has been in Hollywood movies such as Cast Away and the 1996 blockbuster Twister. After winning an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1998 for her performance in As Good as It Gets, she took time off from movie work to play Viola in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night at the 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 & 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. She currently owns a production company with Connie Tavel, Hunt/Tavel Productions under Sony.

In 2006, Hunt appeared in the film Bobby. She also filmed Then She Found Me, with Bette Midler, Colin Firth and Matthew Broderick, which she directed as well as starred in.

Hunt has been recognized extensively in her career. She is one of only two actresses (the other is Helen Mirren) to win a Golden Globe Award, an Academy Award and an Emmy Award in the same year (1998), the only actress to win four consecutive Emmys, and the only actress to win four Blockbuster Entertainment Awards.

Personal life

Hunt was married to actor Hank Azaria from 1999 until 2000. She has been in a relationship with Matthew Carnahan since 2001 and they have a daughter, Makena'lei Gordon Carnahan, born in 2004.^[2]

Filmography

Awards

Academy Award

• 1998 Best Actress in As Good as It Gets

Emmy Award

• 1996 Outstanding Lead Actress in Mad About You
• 1997 Outstanding Lead Actress in Mad About You
• 1998 Outstanding Lead Actress in Mad About You
• 1999 Outstanding Lead Actress in Mad About You

Golden Globe Award

• 1994 Best Performance by an Actress in Mad About You
• 1995 Best Performance by an Actress in Mad About You
• 1997 Best Performance by an Actress in Mad About You
• 1998 Best Performance by an Actress in As Good as It Gets

Screen Actors Guild Award

• 1995 Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in Mad About You
• 1998 Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in As Good as It Gets

Trivia

• She donated $100,000 to help the Screen Actors Guild cause.
• Aside from being the highest paid actress on TV, she also commanded the highest ever fee for a screen actress.
• Over 25 million people tuned in to see her performance in an episode of Mad About You titled, "The Birth".
• Murphy Brown's Candice Bergen praised Hunt as her "hero" in her Emmy acceptance speech.
• She is unrelated to actress Bonnie Hunt, who was originally offered the Mad About You female lead.
• Steven Spielberg wrote Hunt a fan letter after seeing her play Tami Maida in Quarterback Princess and Hunt wrote Spielberg a fan letter too after seeing Saving Private Ryan.
• Her daughter's name, Makena'lei, comes from the name of a town in Maui, Hawaii
• Hunt's left wing activism was parodied in the film Team America: World Police.
• Helen Hunt is the second of three women to win an Oscar and an Emmy in the same year 1998, following Liza Minnelli in 1973 and preceding Helen Mirren in 2006.

References

1. ^ [1]
2. ^ http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,14161,00.html

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