Holly Hunter: Her Career in Photos

Holly Hunter

Her voice — that dazzling, invigorating Georgia twang — could have limited Holly Hunter's 37-year career, but she tricked that assumed weakness into an invincible strength. Hunter's first big break came in 1982 when she replaced Mary Beth Hurt in Crimes of the Heart, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Beth Henley. “I kinda had a backdoor Broadway debut,” she says. “I was able to sneak in and learn on the job in a way that was a little less noticed.” Two audience members did notice her: upstart filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, who would cast Hunter in Raising Arizona five years later. Physically diminutive but possessing a towering intensity, she’s been a beacon for a generation of audiences (plus actors and directors) who are fortified by her power, in work as singular as Broadcast News and The Piano. “People achieve their dreams in unorthodox ways, man,” she says. “I’m one of those people.” At 59, Hunter’s still in peak form — as she proved during our look back at her extraordinary career.

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With Frances McDormand, friends since 1981

Frances McDormand(R), who stars in the motion pict — JIM RUYMEN/AFP/Getty Images

Hunter’s friendship with Frances McDormand altered the course of both women’s lives. “I met Fran on a trip to Yale in 1981, and it was an immediate hookup,” Hunter says. “My boyfriend at the time was best friends with her boyfriend.” Later, after they became roommates in a Bronx apartment, Hunter introduced McDormand to the Coen brothers, who then cast McDormand in Blood Simple. Joel Coen and McDormand married in 1984. “Fran was a great roommate,” Hunter says, smiling at the memory. “We were both smoking back then, and it was a pleasure to wake up, hang out at the kitchen table, and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes together. And then sometimes we would smoke and drink coffee until it was time to smoke and drink wine. Those were magical days.”

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Raising Arizona (1987)

Hunter had appeared in just a few TV movies when the Coens cast her in Raising Arizona. The baby-crazy police officer named Ed was a role they’d written for her. “I was not an entity at all. I had no profile,” she says. “We were all living in a house in L.A. together, and they gave me this script. I could hear my voice in it, and I could almost see the movie. Then they cast Nic Cage, who I’d seen in Valley Girl and I totally adored.” She recalls Raising Arizona’s theatrical release: “It was not a big hit. You know, Joel and Ethan’s success has been very cumulative. It’s a much more recognized movie now, but it took it a while to gain legs.”

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Broadcast News (1987)

BROADCAST NEWS, Albert Brooks, Holly Hunter, William Hurt, 1987. TM and Copyright (c) 20th Century F — Everett Collection

Her role as the terrier-like television news producer Jane Craig scored Hunter her first Oscar nomination and rocketed her to Hollywood’s A list. “I’d been told I was totally wrong for it, but [director James L.] Brooks verged on obsession when it came to casting. He opened the floodgates, and I was one of the floodgate actresses." After auditioning with William Hurt (pictured with Hunter and Albert Brooks), she was invited to the director's apartment on New York City's Upper West Side. "And Albert Brooks opened the door with champagne in his hands," she says. "Cool, huh? That’s how I got the part.” Director Brooks changed Craig’s background to accommodate Hunter’s Georgia accent. “There is prejudice against people from the South, that they are ignorant or lack education. So it was so fantastic to play a Southerner who was intellectual and lightning fast and actually was the smartest person in the room.”

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Roe vs. Wade (1989)

Film and Television — Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock

“Now that’s a cool photo,” Hunter says. “That’s a ’70s shirt, ’70s hair, definitely a ’70s belt.” Hunter won her first Emmy for this NBC movie about the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case that legalized a woman’s right to abortion. “I had no sense that going to TV was a punitive action. In fact, the success of Broadcast News afforded me the chance to do this. I loved doing it. I just wish we could say the story was an anachronism.”

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Miss Firecracker (1989)

Hunter (seen here with Mary Steenburgen and Alfre Woodard) played a Mississippi beauty pageant contestant in Beth Henley’s 1984 Broadway play and then transferred it to the screen. “How about that hair, huh?” she says. “Those were the days. I’ve never gotten so much attention on the street as when I was that color. You say blondes have more fun? No, I’m telling you—red!”

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Always (1989)

Everett Collection; Inset: GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images

“Oh, man, Spielberg. Steven Spielberg has absolutely no conflict about enjoying himself on a movie set. I’m not saying it’s his social hour or something, but he loves the engagement. He’s doing what he truly, deeply always wanted to do. And he’s an Everyman. That’s the soul of his movies.”

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The Firm (1993)

In a cameo role that might have been a throwaway in less adventurous hands, Hunter adds jazz notes to the John Grisham adaptation, playing a bleach-blond, chain-smoking secretary (pictured with Gary Busey and Tom Cruise). "Man, I'm sure you've heard it before, but Busey is a fun guy. On the set, it was always like, 'Mi trailer, su trailer.'" In the movie’s single best scene, David Strathairn (as Cruise’s brother) tells her, “I love your crooked little mouth.” “Well, it’s not my best feature,” Hunter’s character responds. “I think it was [director] Sydney Pollack who came up with that,” Hunter says. “He loved little improvisations.”

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The Piano (1993)

THE PIANO, Holly Hunter, Anna Paquin, 1993. ©Miramax/Courtesy Everett Collection — Everett Collection

Few actors have ever enjoyed a year as fruitful and rewarding as Hunter’s 1993. No achievement could eclipse Jane Campion’s The Piano and Hunter’s transcendent, Oscar-winning performance as a mute Scottish woman dislocated in 19th-century New Zealand. “I was certainly not alone in my recognition of how beautiful and intimate Jane’s script was,” she says. “But I just worried that the movie was going to be so tiny that maybe nobody would see it.” Apart from sparingly used voice-over, Hunter has no dialogue in the film. Her performance is a wonderment of gestures and messages delivered via her mischievous daughter, played by Anna Paquin (pictured). On Oscar night in 1994, Paquin won Best Supporting Actress—and Hunter was also nominated (for her role in The Firm) against her 11-year-old costar. “Oh, God, that’s right! I’d forgotten that. Talk about surreal, huh? But yeah, obviously I wanted Anna to win. I loved her to no end.”

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The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom (1993)

For this crackling fact-based HBO satire, Hunter won another Emmy as a hyper-verbal woman embroiled in a tabloid melee of her own making. “I finished The Piano and came back to the United States, and I so badly wanted to talk on camera,” she says. “I had a lot to say, and this girl definitely had a lot to say. It was a great antidote, a wonderful yin-yang that I got to do.”

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Home for the Holidays, (1995)

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS, Holly Hunter, Robert Downey Jr., 1995 — Everett Collection

“Believe me, it was a lot of fun having Downey as my brother for a couple months,” she says of this family comedy directed by Jodie Foster, costarring Robert Downey Jr., Charles Durning, and Anne Bancroft. “Whenever I’m in a hotel during the holidays, it’s on TV. It got a lukewarm reception at the time, but that was not fair. It really works.”

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Crash (1997)

CRASH, James Spader, Holly Hunter, 1996. ©Fine Line/courtesy Everett Collection — Everett Collection

Rated NC-17 and a scandal upon release, this sex-and-car-accident provocation appealed to Hunter. “I really pursued that one, entirely because of [director] David Cronenberg,” she says. “I had a bit of scar makeup, though I was hardly defaced at all for a Cronenberg movie.” She remains proud of the film but is miffed that it shares a title with the 2005 Best Picture winner: “For the record, how could another movie be called Crash? Come on, what the heck is that?”

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Living Out Loud (1998)

LIVING OUT LOUD, Holly Hunter, 1998, dancing — Everett Collection

Hunter starred along with Queen Latifah and Danny DeVito as a New Yorker who starts marching to her own beat after being dumped by her husband. “One of my rare totally non-Southern roles,” she says. “But I just fell in love with that character. And I felt that movie was a very private expression for me.”

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Moonlight Mile (2002)

MOONLIGHT MILE, Holly Hunter, Jake Gyllenhaal, 2002, (c) Walt Disney/courtesy Everett Collection — Everett Collection

In director Brad Silberling's drama, Hunter played a prosecutor named Mona Camp — a character based on real-life lawyer Marcia Clark. Before the O.J. Simpson trial, Clark put away the murderer of actress Rebecca Schaeffer, Silberling's then-girlfriend. "I met Marcia Clark in person and it was incredibly fascainting to get to talk to someone with that kind of brain," Hunter says. "And Jake Gyllenhaal (pictured with Hunter) is one of the really rare ones. He's so warm and welcoming as a person. Just open arms."

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Thirteen (2003)

64-18 EW.JPG — Anne Marie Fox/Fox Searchlight

Her portrayal of the mother of a wayward teen (Evan Rachel Wood, pictured) in this gritty indie nabbed Hunter her fourth Oscar nod. “Oh, I love this photo,” she says. “Evan was 14 at the time, and she’s been showing off her acting chops ever since. But she was too young to hang out on the set for the number of hours we worked. So often I did my work opposite [director] Catherine Hardwicke.”

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The Incredibles (2004)

THE INCREDIBLES, Elastigirl, 2004, (c) Walt Disney/courtesy Everett Collection — Everett Collection

“In Europe I’m recognized mostly for The Piano and Crash,” Hunter says. “But here in the U.S., it’s Elastigirl. Animated movies are still a big mystery to me, but I loved it how [director] Brad Bird didn’t pick from the top five actors or actresses. He said, ‘I want Craig T. Nelson and Holly Hunter,’ and that’s what he got.”

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Saving Grace (2007-2010)

As a hard-drinking police detective on TNT’s hit crime drama, Hunter reached a huge new audience. “The schedule was hellacious; it was otherworldly,” she says of doing a weekly series. “However, I had a huge appetite for playing a cop. Maybe it goes back to Raising Arizona.” Hunter will be back on the small screen soon. She's currently shooting a new 10-episode HBO series called Here, Now from Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, True Blood), scheduled to premiere next year. "Oh, wait until you hear about this," she says of the family drama. "It's beyond provocative."

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Top of the Lake (2013)

Hunter reunited with The Piano director Jane Campion to play an oddball ashen-haired guru in this six-hour TV drama set in New Zealand. “How much fun is Jane?” she asks rhetorically. “Well, here you go: There’s beautiful Moke Lake behind me in this photo. We would finish all this filming s--- and then we’d all go jump in the lake. Me and all these postmenopausal women. And Jane, of course, leading the charge.”

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The Big Sick (2017)

Hunter and Ray Romano costar as nerve-jangled parents who develop a relationship with the Pakistani-born ex-boyfriend (Kumail Nanjiani) of their comatose daughter (Zoe Kazan). “The movie works magically because it has profound political ramifications,” Hunter says, “but it’s served up as such a charming rom-com. You are laughing every 30 to 45 seconds, even though it’s about the hardest chapter in these people’s existence. In the smallest comic details lies the universe.”

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Strange Weather (2017)

In this drama directed by Katherine Dieckmann (opening July 28), Hunter stars as a woman seeking answers about the death of her adult son. "It's seven years after that happened," she says, "and the character puts herself together every morning. She's not bedridden, she’s not eating handfuls of anti-depressants. But it's deceptive — she hasn't moved on at all. And revenge for her not really a way out. It’s more like a cul-de-sac.”