In less than three decades, Helen
Hunt has gone from the very top of the film industry to, well, a lot of places. Both in and out of Hollywood, breakups
are a common part of adulthood. Even so, Helen Hunt surprised many in 2017
by calling things off with her boyfriend of 16 years, producer Matthew Carnahan. The two had been together since 2001, and even
welcomed a daughter together in 2004. And yet, despite In Touch Weekly reporting that Hunt and
Carnahan appeared to be crazy for each other, they couldn't keep their spark alive forever.
According to a source who spoke to the tabloid, their separation was pretty turbulent. That same source revealed that the pair had
done this several times before, recalling, "Matthew moved out a few times over the
years. Helen would always take him back, and then time would pass and
she'd kick him out again." Now, however, it seems they're done for real
and even their mutual love for their daughter, Makena Lei Gordon Carnahan, couldn't
keep them together any longer. On May 13, 2004, shortly before her 41st
birthday, Helen Hunt gave birth to Makena. Given this was such a big change in her
life, it's unsurprising that Hunt pulled back from the Hollywood grindstone for a
while. After four decades without kids, it's completely understandable that Hunt wanted
to stay home more to raise her firstborn. In fact, even during her rare forays back
into the public eye during Makena's childhood, her focus was still very much on her daughter.
She even spent the entire duration of a 2013 interview with The Independent knitting
a doll for her daughter while fielding questions about how a movie she starred
in would do in the upcoming award season. Now that Makena is a legal adult, we may start
to see more of her mother in the celebrity world again. However, given that Makena remains her only
child, we wouldn't be surprised if Hunt continued to dedicate massive amounts of her energy toward
the continued love and support of her daughter. Makena is already embarking on her own
creative endeavors as a songwriter, and as a fellow artist it would only make
sense that Hunt would want to continue a close relationship with her daughter
as she transitions into adulthood. "The two of them write the songs together
and they — I just hear them downstairs, like laughing, or they'll write some sad
lyric and then I hear 'That's cool!'" In the time since her heyday
at the turn of the century, Helen Hunt never outright stopped making
movies. However, with a few exceptions, odds are a large portion of her long-time fans
may not have heard of most of those projets. At the height of her career, Hunt starred
in films like 1997's As Good As It Gets, and the combination of her charisma
and chemistry with co-star Jack Nicholson netted the rom-com almost $315
million worldwide. A year before that, she was in Twister, a disaster epic
that grossed almost $500 million. Right after her sitcom, Mad About You ended, she
starred in 2000's What Women Want and Cast Away, which took in $375 million and
$430 million, respectively. “I’m gonna miss the excitement
but I’ll handle it.” Throughout the aughts, she also starred in
films like The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Dr. T & the Women, and Bobby, all of which
failed to impress moviegoers. Critically, her rock bottom moment has to be 2010's Every Day,
which opened in three theaters, never made it past four, and ultimately grossed a paltry $46,029
over ten weeks. This film in particular was a pretty serious disappointment, as it marked Hunt's
return to the screen after a three-year hiatus. In an interview with The Daily Beast, Helen Hunt
said that part of the reason she shifted into low gear after her late '90s boom was due to her Oscar
win for As Good As It Gets. She explained that, after making an arrangement with Sony, she
began writing heavily between acting gigs. Around this time she received a copy of
Elinor Lipman's novel Then She Found Me, and she began working hard to adapt it against the
changing tide of the film industry. Hunt recalled, "I'd just been in the last big wave
of movies about people talking to each other and trying to love each
other, so as that was shrinking, I was trying to make one of those
movies. So I kept rewriting it subtly." As a result of the public's changing taste,
studios stopped funding the style of movies Hunt was known for. The actress elaborated
that, in turn, she got pretty tired of making romantic comedies herself, so it was pretty apt
timing for a change in her creative pursuits. Despite the changing time, Hunt wound up using
her adaption of And Then She Found Me as her first foray into directing and starring in a film.
Unfortunately, the 2007 dramedy, and Hunt's performance in particular, fell flat with critics.
One reviewer for The Los Angeles Times wrote, "The problem isn’t so much the character of
April as it is the way Hunt plays her — a little too whiny, a little too angry to be
very sympathetic. Hunt has a tendency to play up those characteristics in
just about everything she does." Hunt's debut as a director was also criticized, with Christy DeSmith of the Minneapolis Star
Tribune calling her direction "heavy-handed" before expanding that her acting
performance was also lackluster. After her feature-length directorial debut failed
critically, Hunt took a long break from directing, Then, over the past decade, she began
pursuing the artform in earnest once again. "Any thoughts on how?" Recently, she's focused mainly on television, overseeing an episode of Californication, two
episodes of Revenge, two of Life In Pieces, and one each of House of Lies, This
Is Us, and Feud: Bette and Joan. In 2014, she directed her second
film with Ride. While it wasn't her best creative effort to date —
earning only 52% on Rotten Tomatoes, she's clearly working hard to get better at her
new profession and will only improve over time. Before Bobby and Then She Found Me,
critics also tore apart A Good Woman, a film adaptation of an Oscar Wilde
play. Speaking to Paste Magazine, Hunt explained that she drew great inspiration
from the play and its lead role, saying, "It has all the earmarks of a really
good part. I certainly saw in there the potential for a character I
haven't seen in a little while." Hunt played the seductive Mrs. Erlynne. While
the part in question may have been juicy, critics didn't exactly love what Hunt did
with it. A review by The A.V. Club criticized the actor's performance as "embarrassingly
out of place," with many of her mannerisms lacking the sensual allure the role called for.
Another harsh review in The Seattle Times noted, "[Hunt] is completely at sea here, flatly
intoning her lines as if she'd memorized them phonetically [...] It's a mystifyingly bad
performance, and it drags down the entire movie." With reviews like that coming in, we'd probably consider taking a step
away from the big screen as well. Even before her film career blew up, Helen Hunt
slowed her professional pace in the wake of Mad About You. One possible explanation for why
she did this is that she'd simply made a lot of money. With a successful show already under
her belt, she had little need to work unless she really wanted to. For this reason she could also
afford to be picky regarding potential roles. Hunt's wealth increased magnificently in May
1998, as she and her Mad About You co-star Paul Reiser negotiated pay raises from $250,000 an
episode to an incredible $1 million per episode. Though this pay grade only lasted
them through the final season, its 22 episodes still netted
both of them over 8 figures. Once you factor those paychecks in with the money
she'd made starring in Hollywood blockbusters, you can see how acting has given her wealth beyond
most anyone's wildest dreams. So next time you're wondering why Helen Hunt isn't everywhere anymore,
the answer might just be: she doesn't have to be. One of the hardest things for anyone to
face is the death of a family member, and in 2016, Hunt suffered the loss of her father. On December 17 of that year, Gordon Hunt, famed
director of cartoons and live-action television, passed away at the age of 87. According
to the Hollywood Reporter, he had been suffering from Parkinson's
disease prior to his death. Gordon Hunt had his foot in many
doors of the entertainment industry, and even worked with some of the
biggest names in Hollywood today. "Gordon hunt was my acting teacher
when I was in LA for a couple years." It may not surprise avid Hunt fans that Gordon
actually directed 31 episodes of Mad About You. In fact, he even directed the episode in
which his daughter's character gave birth, which must have been quite a surreal
experience for both the actress and her father Speaking to the Hollywood
Reporter, Hunt said of her father, "If you asked 100 people who knew him, 100 of them
would say he was the kindest man they ever knew." Even before his death, she honored him by
dedicating her 2014 surfing film Ride to him. Reportedly, Gordon was an active bodysurfer from
the 1930s until just a few years before his death. In addition to her illustrious film and TV
career, Hunt has also been a very public advocate for women's rights. In 2012, Hunt appeared on
NBC's Who Do You Think You Are?, a show showing celebrities learning about their family tree.
During her appearance on the show, Hunt learned that her great-great-grandmother was a pivotal
figure in the battle for women's equality. This revelation must have ignited a spark in
Hunt, as she's been vocal about women's rights, both in and out of Hollywood since. During
a 2015 interview with the Huffington Post, Hunt was openly critical of the limited range
of roles available to women of all ages. She criticized the industry for its lacking
amount of stories with strong female leads, and how even projects as simple
as billboard advertisements often try to sexualize models and
actresses for no logical reason. She later made her stance further known
by joining the Women's March to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump in
response to the derogatory things he said about women before and during his
campaign. Even if Hunt never acts again, she's certainly got plenty of
work ahead of her in philanthropy. In 2017, Helen Hunt was primed for a cinematic
comeback after being tapped for a major role in a new film. Written and directed by Louis C.K,
the black-and-white I Love You, Daddy starred C.K. as a TV writer who doesn't know what to do when
his young daughter, played by Chloe Grace Moretz, starts to date a significantly older and famously
sleazy filmmaker played by John Malkovich. Hunt co-starred in the film, playing the ex-wife
to C.K.'s character and mother of Moretz's. I Love You, Daddy was set for a star-studded
premiere in New York on November 17, 2017, but the event was canceled at the last minute
after the New York Times' published accounts of five women who accused C.K. of sexual
misconduct. A subsequent theatrical release was immediately taken off the table as well,
as C.K. bought back the rights to the film. In November 2019, Helen Hunt
returned to the role of Jamie for the reboot of Mad About You. Her
time on the original show not only made her famous, but netted her four
Emmy Awards and three Golden Globes. "Once we got into the space,
it felt wildly familiar." While its initial run on NBC ended in 1999, it came back to TV on the tail end of
the reboot craze that saw other '90s hits like Twin Peaks, The X-Files, and
Roseanne return to open-armed viewers. The 12 new episodes of the series focused on the
once-young and newlywed Jamie and Paul wondering what to do with themselves after their only child
leaves for college. Mad About You version 2.0, however, just didn't click as well
as its fellow revived classics, earning a middling 42% rating
from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. If fans wanted to watch it, it
was also kind of hard for them to find. The season aired on Spectrum Originals, a relatively obscure network that serves as
the showcase channel for a cable company. In 2017, Helent Hunt found herself
at the center of an international controversy. She agreed to participate in
an event known as the World Youth Forum, which took place in Sharm
El-Sheikh a resort city in Egypt. As a high-profile celebrity, Hunt
was made a featured speaker at the opening ceremony. From the outside, her
participation seems completely harmless, or even commendable, as the World Youth
Forum presents itself as a humanitarian group aiming to improve the state of
the world for the younger generations. The controversy stems from the event's ties
to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has been labeled as a dictator by activist
groups in Egypt and elsewhere in the world. More than 100 individuals, including
many prominent human rights activists, signed a joint letter condemning
Hunt's involvement in the event. The activists called Hunt out directly by saying, "As you shake hands with Sisi, smile, take
a photo, let history note that you chose to support a dictator responsible for thousands of
deaths, arbitrary detentions, and disappearances." The arbitrary detentions mentioned in the
letter refer to the wrongful imprisonment of journalists and LGBTQ+ individuals at
the hands of al-Sisi's administration. It is possible that Hunt signed
up for what she thought was a humanitarian event without being aware
of the controversy that would follow, but she was certainly made aware of it after
the huge backlash became public. Nevertheless, Hunt went ahead and gave her speech
at the World Youth Forum all the same. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic,
the film industry shut down completely, causing the production of many films to be delayed
as everyone went into lockdown. Slowly but surely, projects with contained locations and
limited casts began coming together again until the industry found its footing
once more. One of the first films to come out of the social-distancing era
of the pandemic was How It Ends. The film was written and directed
by Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones, the latter of whom also starred
in the film. As the title implies, the film is a comedy about the end of the world,
but rather than fully embracing the medical threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, the virus was
swapped for a meteor headed toward Earth. "Do you actually believe the
news? The meteor is fake." While most of the small-scale movies
made during this first phase of the pandemic kept their casts as tiny
as possible for practical reasons, How It Ends went in the opposite direction. The
film was packed with a slew of stars including Olivia Wilde, Charlie Day, Bradley
Whitford, Colin Hanks, Fred Armisen, Logan Marshall-Green, Whitney Cummings,
Finn Wolfhard, and of course, Helen Hunt. The film takes place almost entirely outside, with
the cast observing social distancing guidelines. It mostly unfolds like a series of vignettes as
Lister-Jones walks through empty streets during lockdown. It never aimed to be anything more than
a bit of harmless fun during a trying time for the industry, and the film didn't have much of a
shelf life beyond the era in which it was made. What's more, the film's lackluster legacy was
surely cemented by the release of Don't Look Up, a much higher-budget movie with an almost identical
concept that came out the very same year. 1996's Twister was one of the biggest box
office hits of Helen Hunt's career. The film was the second highest-grossing movie of the
year, blowing all of the competition out of the water except for Independence
Day. More than two decades later, a potential sequel looms on the horizon
— but not the one Hunt would have liked. After working on the original film in front of the
camera only, Hunt wanted to expand her involvement in the sequel. She wrote a script for Twister
2 alongside her Blindspotting collaborators, Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal. Hunt also
planned to direct the sequel herself, but could not find a studio willing to play ball. Hunt and Diggs both pointed to the script's
emphasis on diversity as the possible reason why it was a non-starter for the studio.
Speaking to Insider, Hunt explained, "I tried to get it made, with
Daveed and Rafael and me writing it, and all Black and Brown storm
chasers, and they wouldn't do it." Later on in the interview, Diggs elaborated that
a factor for why the movie was never made was for a quote, "shady" reason that he found to be a
typical issue in the contemporary film industry. A completely different Twister sequel titled
Twisters is currently in the works with an expected release date of summer 2024.
The plot is said to revolve around the daughter of the main characters played
by Hunt and Bill Paxton in the original. The bulk of the cast of Twisters has already
been publicly announced, but Hunt's name is not on the list. While a reason for Hunt's
absence has yet to be publicly announced, it's possible she simply wasn't asked to return,
or that she chose not to reprise her role after her own sequel script was rejected. For all we
know, she could even be involved with Twisters in an unexpected way, but her presence is
being kept under wraps for the time being. Regardless, it seems that Hunt's initial vision
for a Twister sequel will never come to life.
