Helen Elizabeth Hunt is an American actress, film director, and screenwriter. She starred in the sitcom Mad About You

Mad About You

Mad About You is an American sitcom that aired on NBC from September 23, 1992 to May 24, 1999. The show starred Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt as a newly married couple in New York City. Reiser played Paul Buchman, a documentary film maker. Hunt played Jamie Stemple Buchman, a public relations specialist...

for seven years, before being cast in the romantic comedy

Romantic comedy film

Romantic comedy films are films with light-hearted, humorous plotlines, centered on romantic ideals such as that true love is able to surmount most obstacles. One dictionary definition is "a funny movie, play, or television program about a love story that ends happily"...

 As Good as It Gets

As Good as It Gets

As Good as It Gets is a 1997 American romantic comedy film directed by James L. Brooks and produced by Laura Ziskin. It stars Jack Nicholson as a misanthropic, obsessive-compulsive novelist, Helen Hunt as a single mother with an asthmatic son, and Greg Kinnear as a gay artist. The screenplay was...

(for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress

Academy Award for Best Actress

Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...

). Some of her other Hollywood credits include Twister, Cast Away

Cast Away

Cast Away is a 2000 drama film directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks as a FedEx employee stranded on an uninhabited island after his plane crashes in the South Pacific. The film depicts his successful attempts to survive on the island using remnants of his plane's cargo, as well as his...

, What Women Want

What Women Want

What Women Want is a 2000 American romantic comedy film, directed by Nancy Meyers and starring Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt. The movie was a box office success with a domestic gross of $182,811,707 and a worldwide gross of $374,111,707, against a budget of $70 million.-Plot:Nick Marshall, a Chicago...

and Pay It Forward

Pay It Forward

Pay It Forward is a 2000 American drama film based on the novel of the same name by Catherine Ryan Hyde. It was directed by Mimi Leder and written by Leslie Dixon...

, and Soul Surfer

Soul Surfer (film)

Soul Surfer is a 2011 American drama film about the life of surfer Bethany Hamilton. At the age of thirteen, Hamilton lost her arm to a shark attack. The film details the events surrounding this attack and her struggle during the aftermath...

. She made her directorial debut in 2007 with Then She Found Me

Then She Found Me

Then She Found Me is a 2007 American comedy-drama film directed by Helen Hunt. The screenplay by Hunt, Alice Arlen, and Victor Levin is based on the 1990 novel of the same name by Elinor Lipman...

.
Hunt was born in Culver City

Culver City, California

Culver City is a city in western Los Angeles County, California. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 38,883, up from 38,816 at the 2000 census. It is mostly surrounded by the city of Los Angeles, but also shares a border with unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County. Culver...

, California. Her mother, Jane Elizabeth (née Novis), worked as a photographer, and her father, Gordon E. Hunt

Gordon Hunt (director)

Gordon E. Hunt is an American actor, voice actor, director of stage, film, and voiceover and casting director.-Life and career:...

, is a film director and acting coach.