A decade ago, Helen Hunt won a Best Actress Oscar for playing a kindly waitress in “As Good As It Gets.” Most actresses would have parlayed that into more and bigger movie roles. But Hunt has been largely absent from films since then. Ask her what happened and she will explain simply: “I got a life.” “I was not offered parts that I couldn't resist, my real life started taking up a lot of time and attention,” Hunt said recently while appearing at the Miami Film Festival. “I fell in love, I had a daughter, so it was hard to find a part that was as interesting as watching her grow up. (Why) go off and pretend to be someone's mother, pretend to be someone's wife, when I finally had the chance to have that experience in my real life?” Then, she found a reason to return to movies. It's called “Then She Found Me,” a new romantic drama opening Friday. Hunt not only stars in it but also co-wrote the script and directed it. Although she was captivated by Elinor Lipman's novel about an elementary schoolteacher looking for love and having her world disrupted by the sudden appearance of a woman claiming to be her biological mother, Hunt had no intention of wearing three hats on the film. “It wasn't given to me as something to direct,” she explains, but simply to play the leading role of forlorn April Epner. “And I tried to get it made, and I wasn't able to. It was lovely and heartfelt and smart, but there were some key things missing from the story, like a driving, active thing that this protagonist wants.” At 39, April's desire for motherhood was surely paramount, Hunt decided, but “the baby wish was not in the novel.” She concluded that the initial screenplay was too faithful to Lipman's novel, and set about to fix it. “I worked on it for a while, I put it away, I lived my own life, and the answers to those missing pieces sort of started to come, so I rewrote it,” says Hunt. 44. “I began to have a sense of authorship over it and early on in that part of the process, I decided I would direct it.” Hunt had already dabbled in directing, steering a handful of episodes of the ‘90s sitcom “Mad About You,” on which she won four Emmy Awards playing edgy New Yorker Jamie Buchman. But she did not really feel as though she was destined to direct feature films. “I was and I wasn't,” she says ambivalently. “I imagined it as a job I would be well-suited for, and at the same time, the idea of just directing something in order to direct seemed pointless.” Nevertheless, “Then She Found Me” reawakened that directing urge. And then, at the last minute, she realized that she also had to play April. “Because of the limited time and money that I had, I literally needed to know that one of the two actors in each scene knew the movie the way I wanted it to be. It was literally easier for me to act in it than try to communicate it to somebody else.” Besides, she says, “I couldn't have asked another actor to work 20 hours a day and change in a van off-street.” Perhaps Hunt's biggest gamble was casting naturally brassy Bette Midler as April's biological mother, and toning her down to give a credible dramatic performance. “She didn't know that I wanted it played this way when I first met her,” says Hunt. “She said, ‘Oh, you don't want a big Pucci blouse?' I didn't know what a Pucci blouse is, but I knew that I didn't want it. “You expect her to be a flamboyant character, and she actually presents herself in a grounded way. And then, just when you trust her, she can do some horrible things.” Similarly, Hunt got male lead Colin Firth to play against his usual screen persona. “He is funny, a wonderful actor, all the things we needed, but he was smart enough to know that the danger was coming across as a generic ‘cute dad,' “ says Hunt. “I was afraid that the moment he walked onscreen, people would say, ‘Oh, she's going to be fine. She gets to go off with him.' “So the writing and the acting were both designed to make him such a total mess that we actually don't feel that he's a knight in shining armor.” Hopping into the director's chair, Hunt promised herself she would not do the petty things she had seen less capable directors do. Such as? “To be too insecure to take suggestions from the members of the crew,” Hunt says. “I really didn't want my fear to take away my ability to be generous, my ability to enjoy it.” Still, investors were not falling all over themselves to underwrite “Then She Found Me.” “We had everything going against us,” notes Hunt. “We were not 20, we were not driving cars fast, we were not superheroes. We were a disaster for any financing company.” Eventually one company agreed to sign on, saying “We won't give you a big check, but we'll give you a check, and we won't tell you how to direct it or who to hire.” The film's budget was an estimated $3.5 million, which meant there was plenty that Hunt could not afford to do. “Oh, have lunch,” she says, only slightly exaggerating. “Truly, we had half an hour for lunch, which, by the time you get there and get your daughter out of the car seat, lunch was over.” Hunt is pretty sure she will direct a film again, but at the moment, she likes the sound of only acting. “I've written another script, but I'd love to have it directed by someone who would give me the acting job,” she says. “That would be my wish, but if not, I will direct it to make sure it gets made.” - Cox News Service __
