Helen Hunt Biography
Born: June 15, 1963
A precociously talented youngster, Helen Hunt was drawing paychecks as a television actress from the age of ten. Before she was 17, she had appeared as a regular on two series, Swiss_Family_Robinson (1975) and The Fitzpatricks (1977). Hunt proved she was more than just a workaday child actor with her starring performance in the fact-based 1981 TV movie The Miracle of Kathy Miller, in which she played a high school athlete who overcame severe mental and physical damage brought on by a highway accident.
While she had been appearing in films as early as Rollercoaster in 1977, Hunt was never groomed as a star player, and it is possible that her resemblance to another child actress, Jodie_Foster, held her back from more important roles.
After taking on her first adult role in the 1982 sitcom It Takes Two, Hunt's film assignments improved, with sizable roles in Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985), Peggy_Sue_Got_Married (1986), Project_X (1987), Next of Kin (1989), and The_Waterdance (1991). She also gained a small measure of cult status by appearing in a brace of science fiction films, including Trancers II (1991) and Trancers III (1992). That same year, Hunt landed her longest-lasting acting assignment to date, as the co-star of the Paul_Reiser-created comedy series Mad_About_You. During the show's seven-year run, she won both Emmy and Golden Globe awards for her portrayal of Jamie Buchman. In 1996, Hunt had her most successful film role to date in the blockbuster Twister. The following year, she topped that when she received a Best Actress Oscar for playing a caring waitress and single mother who befriends acerbic, obsessive-compulsive author Melvin Udall (Jack_Nicholson, who also won an Oscar for his performance) in As_Good_As_It_Gets. After Mad_About_You ended in 1999, Hunt appeared in films by several veteran directors, including Robert_Zemeckis (Cast_Away [2000]), Robert_Altman (Dr. T and The Women [2000]), and Woody_Allen (The Curse of the Jade Scorpion [2001]). She starred in +Life x 3 on Broadway in 2003. Hal Erickson, Rovi
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