Age, Biography, and Wiki
Helen Hunt was born on June 15, 1963, making her 61 years old as of 2024. She is best known for her iconic roles in films like Twister and Cast Away, as well as the sitcom Mad About You. Her biography is marked by numerous awards, including an Academy Award for As Good as It Gets and four Primetime Emmy Awards for her work on Mad About You .
| Occupation | Voice Actress |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 15 June 1963 |
| Age | 62 Years |
| Birth Place | Culver City, California, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Gemini |
| Country | U.S |
Height, Weight & Measurements
While specific recent measurements are not readily available, Helen Hunt is known for her distinctive presence on screen. Her height is typically reported as around 5 feet 8 inches (173 cm).
| Height | 5 feet 8 inches |
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Dating & Relationship Status
Helen Hunt has been in several notable relationships. She married actor Hank Azaria in 1999 but divorced him 17 months later. She then began a long-term relationship with producer Matthew Carnahan, with whom she had a daughter, Makena’ lei Gordon Carnahan, in 2004. The couple separated in 2017 .
Hunt rose to fame portraying newlywed Jamie Buchman in the sitcom Mad About You (1992–1999), which earned her three Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress and four Primetime Emmy Awards for Lead Actress. Hunt won the Academy Award for Best Actress for starring as a single mother in the romantic comedy film As Good as It Gets (1997), and established a film career by starring in Twister (1996), Cast Away (2000), What Women Want (2000), and Pay It Forward (2000).
Her mother, Jane Elizabeth (née Novis), worked as a photographer, and her father, Gordon Hunt, was a film, voice and stage director and acting coach. Her uncle, Peter H. Hunt, was also a director. Her maternal grandmother, Dorothy (née Anderson) Fries, was a voice coach.
When she was three, Hunt's family moved to New York City, where her father directed theatre and Hunt attended plays as a child several times a week. Hunt graduated from Providence High School in Burbank, California. She also studied ballet, and briefly attended the University of California, Los Angeles.
Hunt began working as a child actress in the 1970s. Her early roles included an appearance on season 2, episode 3 of TV series "Family" (first aired Oct 26, 1976), playing Robin Trask, a classmate of Kristy McNichol. She also had an appearance as Murray Slaughter's daughter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the 1977 episode “Murray Ghosts for Ted”, as the daughter of George Segal's main character in Rollercoaster (1977), alongside Lindsay Wagner in an episode of The Bionic Woman, an appearance in an episode of Ark II called "Omega", 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. In 1982, Hunt played a young woman who, while on PCP, jumps out of a second-story window, in a made-for-television film called Desperate Lives (a scene which she mocked during a Saturday Night Live monologue in 1994), and she was cast on the ABC sitcom It Takes Two, which lasted only one season. In 1983, she starred in Bill: On His Own, with Mickey Rooney and played Tami Maida in the fact-based production Quarterback Princess; both were made-for-television films. She also had a recurring role on St. Elsewhere as Clancy Williams, the girlfriend of Jack "Boomer" Morrison (David Morse), and had a notable guest appearance as a cancer-stricken mother-to-be in a two-part episode of Highway to Heaven.
By the mid and late 1980s, Hunt had begun appearing in studio films aimed at a teenage audience. Her first major film role was that of a punk rock girl in the sci-fi film Trancers (1984). She played the friend of an army brat in the comedy Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985), with Sarah Jessica Parker and Shannen Doherty, and appeared as the daughter of a woman on the verge of divorce in Francis Ford Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), alongside Kathleen Turner. In 1987, Hunt starred with Matthew Broderick in Project X, as a graduate student assigned to care for chimpanzees used in a secret Air Force project. In 1988, she appeared in Stealing Home, as Hope Wyatt, the sister of Billy Wyatt, played by Mark Harmon and a cast featuring Jodie Foster and Harold Ramis. Next of Kin (1989) featured her as the pregnant wife of a respectable lawman, opposite Patrick Swayze and Liam Neeson.
In 1995, Hunt played the wife of an ex-con living in Queens, alongside Nicolas Cage, in Kiss of Death, a very loosely based remake of the 1947 film noir classic of the same name. In the disaster action film Twister (1996), Hunt starred with Bill Paxton as storm chasers researching tornadoes. Both actors were temporarily blinded by bright electronic lamps halfway through filming, and needed hepatitis shots after shooting in a particularly unsanitary ditch. Twister was the second-highest-grossing film of 1996, behind Independence Day. The film sold an estimated 54,688,100 tickets in the US. It made US$494.5 million around the globe.
Hunt went on to win the Academy Award for Best Actress in the romantic comedy As Good as It Gets (1997), in which she took on the role of a waitress and single mother who finds herself falling in love with a misanthropic, obsessive-compulsive romance novelist, played by Jack Nicholson. Hunt and Nicholson got along well during the filming, and they connected immediately: "It wasn't even what we said", Hunt added. "It was just some frequency we both could tune into that was very, very compatible." Author and screenwriter Andrew Horton described their on-screen relationship as being like "fire and ice, oil and water—seemingly complete opposites". Nonetheless, Hunt was Nicholson's perfect counterpart, and delivered "a simply stunning performance", wrote critic Louise Keller. The film was a tremendous box office success, grossing US$314 million worldwide. In 1998, she played the love interest of Moe Szyslak on The Simpsons episode "Dumbbell Indemnity", and played Viola in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, at Lincoln Center in New York.
Two of Hunt's four film releases in 2000—the comedy Dr. T & the Women and the drama Pay It Forward—were both released in October. While the first featured her as one of the women that encompass the everyday life of a wealthy gynecologist, opposite Richard Gere, the second starred her as the love interest of a physically and emotionally scarred grade school teacher, played by Kevin Spacey. Critic Roger Ebert highlighted her performance in Pay It Forward, despite finding the film itself to be "too emotionally manipulative". Her other two 2000 films—the romantic comedy What Women Want, and the drama Cast Away— were released in December, to outstanding box office receipts. In What Women Want, Hunt starred with Mel Gibson as the co-worker and love interest of a Chicago executive, and in Cast Away, she portrayed the long-term girlfriend of a FedEx employee marooned on an uninhabited island, alongside Tom Hanks.
Hunt made her feature film directorial debut in Then She Found Me (2007), in which she also starred as a 39-year-old Brooklyn elementary school teacher, who after years is contacted by the flamboyant host of a local talk show, played by Bette Midler, who introduces herself as her biological mother. After first reading Elinor Lipman's novel, she tried to interest numerous studios in the material, and her unsuccessful efforts led her to begin writing the screenplay and raising funds to produce it herself. Upon its release, Ruthe Stein of the San Francisco Chronicle observed, "You would think that frontloading Then She Found Me with so much plot would make it play like a soap opera. But Hunt saves the movie from this fate in two ways. First she turns in a touchingly real performance, the best of her big-screen career. Forget that As Good as It Gets won her an Oscar. She's eons better and more realistic in this one [...] By directing Then She Found Me, Helen becomes its savior as well [...] Hunt knows when to rein in the Divine Miss M instead of allowing her to go into full Kabuki mode. [She] also coaxes pitch-perfect performances from Broderick and Firth."
Hunt starred in the dramedy Every Day (2010), as one half of a married couple pulled apart by increasing responsibilities. According to Los Angeles Times, the film "comes as a reminder of [Hunt's] talent for understatement, and a wish to see more of her". In the biographical drama Soul Surfer (2011), she played the mother of the Hawaiian-born champion surfer Bethany Hamilton, on whose life the film was based. Her first wide release since 2001's The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Soul Surfer made US$47.1 million internationally.
Hunt played research geneticist Mary-Claire King in the independent drama Decoding Annie Parker (2013), which was released to a mixed critical response. She wrote and directed the drama Ride (2014), in which she also starred as a mother who travels cross-country to California to be with her son after he decides to drop out of school and become a surfer. Rotten Tomatoes' critical consensus read: "Ride reaffirms Helen Hunt's immense acting talent —but suggests that she still needs time to develop as a director."
In 1994, Hunt started dating actor Hank Azaria. They married in 1999, and divorced 17 months later. In 2001, Hunt began a relationship with producer Matthew Carnahan. In 2004, they had a daughter. The couple split in August 2017.
| Parents | |
| Husband | Hank Azaria (m. 1999-2000) |
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Net Worth and Salary
As of 2024, Helen Hunt's net worth is estimated to be $75 million. Her earnings are largely attributed to her successful acting career, which includes starring roles in major films and television shows. Notably, she earned $1 million per episode in the final season of Mad About You, making her the highest-paid TV actress at the time .
Career, Business, and Investments
Helen Hunt's career spans over four decades, with early recognition coming from the 1984 film Trancers. She gained widespread acclaim for her roles in Twister (1996) and Mad About You (1992–1999). Her film career highlights include Cast Away (2000), What Women Want (2000), and Pay It Forward (2000). She also won the Academy Award for Best Actress for As Good as It Gets (1997) .
In addition to acting, Hunt has ventured into directing. She made her directorial debut with Then She Found Me (2007) and has directed episodes of several TV series, including House of Lies, This Is Us, and American Housewife .
Social Network
While specific details about her social media presence are not extensively documented, Helen Hunt is not known to be highly active on platforms like Instagram or Twitter, focusing more on her professional career and personal life.
In The Miracle Season (2018), based on the true story of the Iowa City West High School volleyball team, Hunt played Kathy Bresnahan, a volleyball coach. In 2019, Hunt appeared in the BBC series World on Fire as journalist Nancy Campbell, a character inspired by real-life war correspondent Clare Hollingworth, and reprised the role of Jamie Buchman in the Mad About You revival, which premiered in the form of a limited series, by Spectrum Originals. In December 2018, Hunt was a guest narrator at Disney's Candlelight Processional at Walt Disney World.
Education
Although specific educational background details are not widely discussed, Helen Hunt's early life and career suggest a strong foundation in the arts, likely influenced by her early involvement in acting.
This article provides a comprehensive overview of Helen Hunt's life, achievements, and financial status, highlighting her as a talented and successful figure in the entertainment industry.
