With "Mad About You" behind her and an Oscar under her belt, Helen Hunt is hitting the big screen with four major films by year's end. Here she talks about her remarkable costars (Mel Gibson, Kevin Spacey, Tom Hanks and Richard Gere), disses the tabloids and speculates about what she--one of the wealthiest actresses in Hollywood--might do with her money.
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At the back of Mo's Restaurant in Burbank, Helen Hunt is talking about a scene with Mel Gibson in the upcoming What Women Want. In the film, Gibson plays a guy suddenly given the ability to read women's thoughts, a skill he uses to manipulate Hunt's character, his boss and rival at an ad agency. When he falls in love with her and comes clean, the original script called for her to feign giving him a hug, then turn it into a right cross that decks him. "We didn't even shoot that," Hunt tells me. "I felt it was too much of a shortcut. I like the pratfally tiling as much as anybody, but this was a revealing part of the movie and I had a feeling that [cowriter/director] Nancy Meyers could write it better than that piece of business." Hunt ought to know her romantic comedy after her run on "Mad About You," where she and Paul Reiser successfully micromanaged the progression of their fictional couple's relationship for seven seasons.
Precisely because it is a romantic comedy, What Women Want was a difficult choice for Hunt to make. She was so selective after winning the Best Actress Oscar for As Good As It Gets that she hasn't been on-screen at all since then. Now she's making up for it. What Women Want is only one of four movies she has coming out in quick succession over the next few months. The others are: the Mimi Leder-directed Pay It Forward, in which she plays the hardcase mom of The Sixth Sense star Haley Joel Osment, whose teacher, Kevin Spacey, challenges him to invent a good-deed campaign; the Robert Altman-directed Dr. T and the Women, in which she plays a golf pro who has an affair with Richard Gere; and the Robert Zemeckis-directed Cast Away, in which she plays Tom Hanks's girlfriend.
It's a heady time for this 37-year-old star who has been acting since age nine and, who, by her 20s, had a long resume of for-gettable TV series and telepics, along with some respectable feature work in commercial films like Project X and ambitious indies like The Waterdance. She then took the bold step of plunging back into TV at a time when most television stars were stymied in their efforts to move into features. Hunt managed to smoothly supplement her "Mad About You" schedule with the blockbuster Twister. Then she got the break of a lifetime when Holly Hunter relinquished a role opposite Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets. Unlike most actors ending seven-season runs on television, Hunt came back to the business of feature films armed not just with Emmys and Golden Globes, but with her Oscar for As Good As It Gets.
Not that her life is totally as good as it gets. During the week of this interview, tabloids were rife with details of her split from her husband, actor Hank Azaria. But three decades of professional life in Hollywood have steeled Hunt to the vagaries of gossip. She's about as focused a vet as you'll meet in the world of entertainment, and right now she's focused on the remarkable slate of films she has hitting the screen before the year's end.
MICHAEL FLEMING: After seven seasons of "Mad About You," you've suddenly got four movies coming out--have you become a workaholic?
HELEN HUNT: No, I'm very happy not working--I took two years off from movies before I did four movies in one year.
Q: You've gone from Richard Gere in Dr. T. and the Women to Kevin Spacey in Pay It Forward to Tom Hanks in Cast Away to Mel Gibson in What Women Want. That's a heavy lineup of leading men.
A: It's very intimidating, but no more so than when I was working with Jack Nicholson. That helped.
Q: This being Oscar season, which of your new films do you think shows you at your best?
A: Pay It Forward is really the one.
Q: Let's start with that one, then. In the script I read, your character shared similarities with the woman you played in As Good As It Gets. She's a waitress, and an emotionally scarred single mother who needs things for her child and is ashamed to have to rely on a man for fear of being let down again.
A: The only real similarity is that she's a waitress. As I put together who this woman was, she became so different from the As Good As It Gets girl, and unlike anybody I've ever played. In the script you read, she works in a cowboy bar, and when somebody pinches her ass, she's bashful. I changed that. Now she leads with her sexuality. She comes on to a guy to get tips, she lies and tells him she doesn't drink, and then goes home and drinks half a fifth of vodka. She doesn't drink to get through her life at work, she drinks to get through her life as a mother at home.
Q: You're known for meticulously researching your characters. How did you tart yourself up for this role?
A: [Director] Mimi [Leder] had the smart idea to move the shoot from Arizona to a corner of Las Vegas, which made it a story about generosity set in a town run on greed. I took two guy friends to Vegas and went to strip clubs and talked with the women. I dyed my hair platinum blonde and got those acrylic nails, because every woman I saw had the nails. I'd been to strip clubs in Thailand, and there the women are fine--it's the men who don't know what to do, who are nudging their buddies, looking pathetic. The women ate the ones in complete control. I tried to put a bit of that in there.
Q: What you've described makes me think of Elisabeth Shue's performance in Leaving Las Vegas. Could you ever have done as hold a thing as that?
A: I loved her performance, but I don't know that I would have chosen that movie. I don't know if it's a story with the kind of message that would make me want to walk through some-thing so difficult. I'm always interested in walking through difficult terrain, but there has to be some reason or I feel like I'm diving around in my own misery.
Q: Name a recent bold performance by a female which you admired.
A: Janet McTeer in [the play] A Doll's House. Diane Lane in A Walk on the Moon, Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry, Just about everything Meryl Streep does, Susan Sarandon in Dead Man Walking.
Q: George Clooney told me recently that when you're TV famous, audiences are so used to having you a certain way that you can't necessarily get away with things like accents when you do features. Do you agree?
A: I'd hate to feel that way, I use an accent in a few of the movies I have coming out, so if that's true, I'm good and screwed. I know what he means, but I wouldn't want to not try something because of that.
Q: One by-product of being television famous is that you seem to be a staple of the tabloids, even though you haven't had the kind of dysfunctional life that makes for a lot of stories. Why do they fixate on you?
A: I must say, I never ever, ever, ever read the tabloids and everybody in my world knows to never show them to me or talk about them with me, so I don't know.
Q: Obviously right now the press is covering your situation with your husband.
A: I don't want to comment on that.
Q: Does being famous make living your personal life difficult?
A: My life isn't at all inhibited by being well-known. I have to say, though, in doing Pay It Forward, it was really fun being all made up. We walked around casinos and everyone was always looking at Kevin. I almost never got recognized because I looked like Tonya Harding. That was really fun.
Q: On Pay It Forward, you worked with Kevin Spacey in the first movie he filmed after winning the Oscar for American Beauty. Was that intimidating?
A: We sat down to start our rehearsals and about an hour in, we kind of looked at each other and both realized, I don't know what planet you're from, but I'm from that same planet. I really felt I had a partner in him.
Q: There are love scenes between your emotionally scarred character and Spacey's physically scarred character, aren't there?
A: Yes, but in this movie, it's not two people jumping into bed. It's specifically set up to show how huge a risk it is for these people to be naked, emotionally and physically. She's having sex for the first time sober and he obviously has never had this kind of experience.
Q: Haley Joel Osment, who plays your son in the film, seemed impossibly self-aware for his age in The Sixth Sense. Where is he compared to where you were at that age?
A: I don't know that I was anywhere near the actor he is at this point.
Q: His father coaches him in his acting, doesn't he?
A: My guess is people have a preconception of what that means. They imagine a father giving his son line readings in a corner. It's not that. His father is an actor, too, and they explore a part the way chat any actor does. The same questions Kevin and I were asking, Haley, with a little help from Eugene, was asking, too. His performance is not some accident. Acting really means a lot to him, and I remember feeling that way. When a take doesn't go well and everybody is moving on, you can see it's upsetting to him. He wants to get it right. And at the same time, he's a kid. When he's done, he goes and rides his bike.
Q: Is this a good way to grow up?
A: If I hadn't lived it, I would think that it was odd. My father was in the theater, and was an acting teacher, but my parents didn't push me into it at all. They were leery but willing. When your kid says, I want to play the violin, you don't not give the kid a violin because you're afraid he won't have a life. You couldn't look at Haley's work and tell him, you can't do this. It would be like taking his fate away. I don't know if he'll be an actor when he's 30, but he's an actor today and you'd be crazy not to nurture it.
Q: In your long career, you were never typecast as a Brat Packer or anything else. How did you avoid it?
A: I seemed to be not able to get into any clique. I tried. I tried to get in all those movies, and was turned down by every single one of them. If there has been a pattern in my career and my life, it's that I always feel like there's a club I want to get into, but don't get into. I just kind of hang on and do my own version. Finally, the club gets a bit bigger and includes me in it. Mind you, the club exists only in my own head. Even when I was getting good jobs in movies, I was the type of person who would think other people had figured out something I hadn't. Personally and professionally, I'd try to see what other people did and I would be unable to do it. I was forced to do the other version, my version. It always takes years.
Q: You really fought to get As Good As It Gets, didn't you?
A: I fought for it so hard. I might have been the studio's idea, and Jim [James L.] Brooks said, No, no, no, that's not right at all. She's too young. Still, he agreed to let me come in. I was so nervous because I loved his work and I wanted the part so badly. I hate wanting something so badly because then there's so much to lose. I felt I was fighting a losing battle. But I just wanted my turn at bat, even if I hit myself in the back of the head swinging. So I read, and then something happened, because next thing I knew, there was a guy with a video camera having me do it again. And again, Then I came back and met Jack so we'd have a sense of working together. Then Jim sat me down and said, I'm scared to do this. I'm scared about the age thing. He said, I want you to do this part, and I want you to begin calking to the people at your TV show, I said, You know what? You're not sure and you need to be sure. Take a little time and be sure you want me.
Q: You really said that, when you wanted the part so badly and had it within your grasp?
A: Is that crazy? I was probably manipulating him a bit, but I felt I had gone down this road as far as I could. I felt there was a point at which, if I kept auditioning... it would have been too much of a letdown. Finally, I got this call at home on a Saturday. I want you to play this part. Usually you never get the call, you hear about it third hand. Getting the call was incredible.
Q: What do you remember most about winning the Oscar?
A: I went to work on "Mad About You" the very next day, and they'd arranged a mariachi band for me, so the Oscars were just a fun stop in a very creative week.
Q: How did the Industry's perception of you change after you won your Oscar?
A: I immediately got offered a lot of movies, and said no to every one of them. Nothing felt exactly right, and I had been spoiled by having everything be exactly right in terms of my series and As Good As It Gets. For a long time, every movie that came out was one I had read. I won't say what the movies were, because the actresses who starred in them might not know I was offered them first. Eventually I wasn't the first person they came to, but the fifth.
Q: When did you realize that As Good As It Gets would so totally launch your screen career?
A: I was doing my show at the same time I made that movie, and the experience was so creatively taxing that I just remember it being hard. Jim's theme for the movie was: that which you cling to for safety ultimately imprisons you. So everybody was busy thinking, What do I cling to to keep me safe? I never had time to think it would be anything.
Q: After you won the Oscar for As Good As It Gets, your salary must have increased dramatically.
A: There was one movie I came very close to doing before deciding not to at the last minute for creative reasons. Had I done that film, I would have made more than I ever had before or since on a movie. I loved the director, and I'd worked with the producer before, but at the last moment. I just felt it was this side of being exactly right. I missed a big post-Oscar payday.
Q: Getting back to your new movies, What Women Want is 180 degrees from Pay It Forward, judging from what I read.
A: Wasn't it a great script? Doing a romantic comedy was ac the bottom of my list of priorities because I was so proud of "Mad About You." But I thought Mel was great casting and the director, Nancy Meyers, was so smart. The set was as fun a place as I've been on, and it was because of her and Mel.
Q: People get caught up on Mel Gibson's looks, but he's a deceptively good actor, as he just showed in The Patriot.
A: Isn't he wonderful in that film? I liked a lot of things about the introverted hero in Gladiator, and that's what interested me about The Patriot, too. But Mel is good in comedy, too.
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.