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Helen Hunt: Much Ado About Shakespeare
Don’t tell Helen Hunt she’s in her third act.
The 47-year-old Oscar, Golden Globe and Emmy-winning multi-hyphenate is too busy playing the Bard’s fiercely independent Beatrice in The Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles’ limited run production of Much Ado About Nothing opening December 12 at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. Or making Thornton Wilder’s iconic Stage Manager her own this past July in Barrow Street Theatre’s record-breaking David Cromer-helmed revival of Our Town in the West Village.
Not to mention co-starring as Liev Schreiber’s wife in the January release Every Day, directing an episode of her former Mad About You co-star Paul Reiser’s new self-titled NBC series, nailing a long board stunt on Oahu’s North Shore for the upcoming feature Soul Surfer or penning her own surf culture film.
“How many acts [in life] are there?” she inquires dryly while seated in a chilly Brentwood church anteroom following rehearsal on the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving. “Is three the last? Shakespeare has five acts in this play so I’m going to hope that’s what we’re talking about!” she laughs then coughs. Hunt is fighting off something, and LA’s unseasonable cold snap coupled with the room’s low thermostat doesn’t help matters.
Dressed in a grey cowl neck sweater, mid-length black skirt and boots, with a red and black checkered wool coat placed over the chair back behind her, the former child star appears tired but focused. Words matter to her. Those she selects are precise and thoughtful, never frivolous. Sans make-up, long blonde hair scattered about her shoulders and posture erect, she conveys an earnest artist persona despite having just emerged from fine tuning one of theater’s most beloved comedic heroines. Off stage, time is a precious commodity and spending it discussing a project she’s passionate about reveals a director mind trained to make every minute count.
Hunt is certainly no stranger to comedy or those concocted by Shakespeare. In 1990, she played Bianca in Shakespeare in the Park’s staging of Taming of the Shrew starring Tracey Ullman and Morgan Freeman followed by Viola in the 1998 Lincoln Center production of Twelfth Night. In between she won four Emmys and four Golden Globes for the hit sitcom Mad About You plus an Oscar and Golden Globe for 1998’s As Good As it Gets opposite Jack Nicholson. This latest foray would not be happening without her keen interest in exploring the classic role.
“He’s written a brilliant thinker in Beatrice and it’s fun to get to bring that to life,” Hunt explains. “She is at the mercy of her own brilliant mind: it serves her and then it doesn’t serve her, then it serves her again and that’s really the joy of the part. What I’ve discovered more than anything in the rehearsal process is Beatrice and Benedick are not the same–I don’t know exactly what Tom [Irwin her co-star] is doing because that’s not my business–but Beatrice is just a joyous woman who is yes, liberated and outspoken and incredibly quick in her mind, but she is also enjoying her life and that’s really fun to play.”
SCLA celebrates its 25th anniversary with the Much Ado mounting and the Kirk Douglas location, made possible by a special arrangement with the Center Theatre Group, marks the organization’s first traditional proscenium production. Founded by its Executive Artistic Director Ben Donenberg in 1985 with a free production of Twelfth Night in Pershing Square, SCLA has since presented ambitious LA-centric, site-specific and often outdoor performances of Shakespeare alongside its nationally recognized youth outreach program Will Power to Youth,
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Don’t tell Helen Hunt she’s in her third act.
The 47-year-old Oscar, Golden Globe and Emmy-winning multi-hyphenate is too busy playing the Bard’s fiercely independent Beatrice in The Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles’ limited run production of Much Ado About Nothing opening December 12 at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. Or making Thornton Wilder’s iconic Stage Manager her own this past July in Barrow Street Theatre’s record-breaking David Cromer-helmed revival of Our Town in the West Village.
Not to mention co-starring as Liev Schreiber’s wife in the January release Every Day, directing an episode of her former Mad About You co-star Paul Reiser’s new self-titled NBC series, nailing a long board stunt on Oahu’s North Shore for the upcoming feature Soul Surfer or penning her own surf culture film.
“How many acts [in life] are there?” she inquires dryly while seated in a chilly Brentwood church anteroom following rehearsal on the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving. “Is three the last? Shakespeare has five acts in this play so I’m going to hope that’s what we’re talking about!” she laughs then coughs. Hunt is fighting off something, and LA’s unseasonable cold snap coupled with the room’s low thermostat doesn’t help matters.
Dressed in a grey cowl neck sweater, mid-length black skirt and boots, with a red and black checkered wool coat placed over the chair back behind her, the former child star appears tired but focused. Words matter to her. Those she selects are precise and thoughtful, never frivolous. Sans make-up, long blonde hair scattered about her shoulders and posture erect, she conveys an earnest artist persona despite having just emerged from fine tuning one of theater’s most beloved comedic heroines. Off stage, time is a precious commodity and spending it discussing a project she’s passionate about reveals a director mind trained to make every minute count.
Hunt is certainly no stranger to comedy or those concocted by Shakespeare. In 1990, she played Bianca in Shakespeare in the Park’s staging of Taming of the Shrew starring Tracey Ullman and Morgan Freeman followed by Viola in the 1998 Lincoln Center production of Twelfth Night. In between she won four Emmys and four Golden Globes for the hit sitcom Mad About You plus an Oscar and Golden Globe for 1998’s As Good As it Gets opposite Jack Nicholson. This latest foray would not be happening without her keen interest in exploring the classic role.
“He’s written a brilliant thinker in Beatrice and it’s fun to get to bring that to life,” Hunt explains. “She is at the mercy of her own brilliant mind: it serves her and then it doesn’t serve her, then it serves her again and that’s really the joy of the part. What I’ve discovered more than anything in the rehearsal process is Beatrice and Benedick are not the same–I don’t know exactly what Tom [Irwin her co-star] is doing because that’s not my business–but Beatrice is just a joyous woman who is yes, liberated and outspoken and incredibly quick in her mind, but she is also enjoying her life and that’s really fun to play.”
SCLA celebrates its 25th anniversary with the Much Ado mounting and the Kirk Douglas location, made possible by a special arrangement with the Center Theatre Group, marks the organization’s first traditional proscenium production. Founded by its Executive Artistic Director Ben Donenberg in 1985 with a free production of Twelfth Night in Pershing Square, SCLA has since presented ambitious LA-centric, site-specific and often outdoor performances of Shakespeare alongside its nationally recognized youth outreach program Will Power to Youth,