Helen Hunt: The Hunt Is On

Q: Pay It Forward and What Women Want are big roles for you. In Cast Away, even though you're with the Oscar-winning Forrest Gump team of Tom Hanks and Robert Zemeckis, your part isn't as substantial. In what's really a one-man show--Hanks stuck on a deserted island--what interested you?

A: Actually, my role changed a lot. Tom's character goes through this experience to find himself, while my character loses herself.

Q: Hanks made a Raging Bull-like transformation in losing something like 50 pounds for the second half of the film. What did you think when you saw him for the later part of the film?

A: Ho lost a ridiculously large amount of weight. When we saw each other at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, I was in my white platinum hair from Pay It Forward and he was in his Lincoln beard. At the same time we said to each other, "We look ridiculous."

Q: Do you seek out directors who are open to input from actors?

A: Well, I've just signed to do a movie for Woody Allen. I have a feeling I'll be marching as ordered there.

Q: Why do so many actors still jump to work with Woody Allen?

A: It's the call you hope you'll get as an actress who grew up in New York loving movies. Just when I'd decided that maybe it was not meant to be, I got the call.

Q: Who was the most collaborative director you've worked with?

A: I felt like I was able to speak a creative language with Jim Brooks I'd never been able to speak with anybody. I realized I could only speak that language if I was incredibly open with him, and that immediately put us out of the usual safety zone and into a very intimate working relationship.

Q: Sandwiched in between the three films we've talked about, you man-aged to play a golf instructor who has an affair with Richard Gere in Dr. T and the Women. What did you take away from that film?

A: My part was small. I just worked on my golf swing and really liked Richard Gere; that was the extent of my experience. I worked for three months on getting a golf swing and there's one swing in the movie. One.

Q: Did you get hooked on the sport?

A: No. Golf takes too much time. But I saw why people do it.

Q: What do you do to stay in the shape you're in?

A: One of my best friends is involved in spinning, and I've started doing that a little, mainly because I wanted to have coffee with her afterward. I run a little bit. I was a dancer, danced eight or nine times a week before "Mad About You" left no time for that--I have fantasies about going back to that. I'd love one day to be in a musical.

Q: As someone who keeps her private life truly private, are you shy when you're not on camera, or do you like to do things like go out to Hollywood parties?

A: I am both. I am shy, but I do like to go to big Hollywood parties. I'd like to meditate by myself on an island for three weeks, but I'd be just as happy drinking tequila and getting stupid on the same island. I am both. I always want A and B. I want a home life with people I'm consistently connected to, but if I'm there too long, I want to travel and have adventures. I don't know much about astrology, but I am the truest Gemini in the world. Ask me if I warn vanilla or chocolate, I want both. All the time.

Q: So do you hang out with a lot of friends, or do you have a few close friends?

A: I have some great friends, I love poetry and I am obsessed with Rilke. My favorite poem by him is an untitled one in a collection that Robert Bly translated. There's a line that says, "I want to unfold because where I am closed I am false; I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone." I feel that way I am very close to very few people. I'd rather be with people who really know me, or be alone.

Q: Though you seem to work all the time, what is your idea of a blissful day off?

A: I could be in New York and see a play or I could be just as happy at Venice Beach, getting a henna tattoo on my ankle and having coffee with a friend, as I did the other day. I read books. I travel. I collect folk art.

Q: How do you accumulate your folk art?

A: I buy pieces through auctions and antique shows, things like early American painted furniture, hooked rugs, weathervanes. I have a rug that's famous in the folk art world. It says, Let Love Be Your Guide. I saw it in a book and kept track of who had it. Finally I found it was going up for sale, and there I was, sitting in bed in my pajamas bidding on the phone with Sotheby's. I got it, and it's now hanging over the fireplace in my living room. Maybe I love hooked rugs because they are made by women, often from the clothes they once wore. To me, folk art has artistic integrity and certain silliness to it. There's a lot to learn about whether a piece merits a huge price, or whether it has been touched up with paint or had a leg replaced. So there's the fun of learning history, but nothing is so precious you can't put a drink down on it.

Q: What are you reading right now?

A: I've got like four books going. One is a book of interviews with British actors that my dad gave me; another is Phil Jackson's book.

Q: Phil Jackson, coach of the Los Angeles Lakers?

A: Yeah, I'm a Lakers fan. I'm fascinated by anybody who combines spiritual work with what they're doing. I'm a girl who's meditated every day for eight years of her life. I don't know if it works, I just know it feels right and I do it.  Any kind of East-meets-West thing feels right to me. So I was fascinated by Phil Jackson. His getting basketball players to meditate is right up my alley.

Q: Are you a religious person?

A: Not in any organized way. I just saw Richard II in London and there's this speech that he has in prison about needing to learn to be nothing in order to be able to learn to he anything. I am whatever that is.

Q: Are you politically active?

A: I'm so ferociously frightened that George Bush will be our next president, I may get more active than I'm used to being.

Q: Are you most concerned about the abortion issue?

A: Start there, then go down the alphabet.

Q: Is getting politically involved unusual for you?

A: I'm pretty introverted to be politically very active.

Q: You described yourself earlier as shy. Is being introverted something else?

A: What I mean by introverted is that I tend to connect to things and people internally first. I go inside, figure it out and then bring it out into the world. Some of my favorite people are the opposite, incredibly expansive. They find their center by going outside themselves.

Q: Are you a big movie buff?

A: I am, but I especially like going to the movies. Parking my car, getting my popcorn. I love it.

Q: Aren't you a fan of Robert B. Parker, author of the Spenser detective novels? Didn't he create a woman detective for you to play in a movie series planned at Sony?

A: I actually don't like detective novels, but I love Parker, because three people in my life are obsessed with him and made me read him.

Q: How is the movie progressing?

A: John Calley and I went to Parker and said, wanna write one about a woman? He said yes, which we couldn't believe. It has been hard, getting the right rake on it, but we're working on it. My company has two movies that suddenly got wake-up calls. One is a movie called Knife, at Warner Bros., about a woman who has such a hard time breaking up with men that she kills them. I might direct it.

Q: I understand you've also become a screenwriter, adapting the Elinor Lipman novel Then She Found Me, about a prim orphaned schoolteacher who discovers her birth mother is a bawdy talk show host.

A: Alice Arlen wrote the first draft, and then my writing partner and I, Vic Levin, did a rewrite. We had a director ready to go and we had me ready to go, but the studio said, It's not there yet. If I could have looked them in the eye and said you're wrong, I would have taken it out of there, but I'm not sure that they're wrong. So now my own script is among that stack of scripts waiting for me.

Q: It was well documented that you and Paul Reiser got paid $1 million an episode in the final season of "Mad About You." Aside from that $22 million season, there will be residuals forever. Does the amount of money you get paid to do movies matter?

A: Compared with the creative factors--the part, the story and the people involved--it's a miniscule matter. But I also consider myself to be a businesswoman, so if I'm offered something, I judge it against what the budget of the film is, and what they stand to gain from my presence.

Q: You became very wealthy during the series. Did it change you?

A: Yes and no. The only thing I collect is folk art, so it's not like I've got 16 antique cars, or own 25 pieces of property. But the money definitely mattered to me. We did a final season of the show because a) Paul and I felt we were not quite finished with what we wanted to do, and b) because the money mattered. Who knows what I want to do in the future? I might want to direct small independent movies or work in the theater. I might want to take a lot of time off. The money allows me all of those things.

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Michael Fleming interviewed George Clooney for the October issue of Movieline.

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