{"id":748565,"date":"2026-07-07T13:43:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T13:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/748565\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T13:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T13:43:08","slug":"bored-youre-never-good-enough-to-get-bored-oscar-winner-helen-hunt-on-great-roles-unruly-audiences-and-her-rsc-debut-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/748565\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Bored? You\u2019re never good enough to get bored!\u2019 Oscar-winner Helen Hunt on great roles, unruly audiences and her RSC debut | Theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s lunchtime in Stratford-upon-Avon and Helen Hunt has 30 minutes to spare. She\u2019s preparing for her Royal Shakespeare Company<\/a> debut and is taking time out to speak to me via Zoom, just her head and shoulders, with what looks like a sleek-surfaced kitchen in the backdrop. Hunt is all sleek surfaces herself: polite smiles, even tones and an inscrutability so strained it makes me wonder what might be bubbling underneath.<\/p>\n

Hunt is starring alongside Kenneth Branagh<\/a> and Bill Pullman in a new version of The Cherry Orchard. She plays Madame Ranevskaya, the Russian aristocrat and matriarch who returns home to find her family estate in jeopardy. The play, like so many of Chekhov\u2019s, is about the apathy of the elite class in the dying days of the Russian empire. So why this play, for her, and why now?<\/p>\n

double quotation mark\u2018Good part: wonderful. Working: terrific. Money: also good. But a compelling story: that\u2019s the no 1 draw\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly,\u201d she says, \u201cit\u2019s the perfect question for the director, mostly.\u201d Oh? \u201cIt\u2019s different if I direct a movie or direct a play. Probably a version of it is right for me as an actor. Why this play, for me, why now? I guess \u2026\u201d Yes, for you. She lists the reasons: \u201cOne of the great playwrights. An impossible beast of a part. A wonderful director [Tamara Harvey] whose ideas and approach interested me.\u201d<\/p>\n

A big fan \u2026 with Kenneth Branagh in rehearsals for The Cherry Orchard. Photograph: Johan Persson<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s Branagh, who plays the self-made businessman Lopakhin. Hunt did not know he\u2019d be in it when she came on board but she is A Very Big Fan. \u201cMy father was an acting teacher who took me to see his Henry V movie and I thought, \u2018Wait, that\u2019s possible?\u2019 That the verse could come to life that clearly and passionately and poetically, that I could understand it in such a crystal clear way, that it could be as exciting as any action movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hunt, now 63, is excited about making her RSC debut too. \u201cMy favourite kind of work is what\u2019s been done here so I\u2019m thrilled and flattered, honestly.\u201d Since The Cherry Orchard is a play about class and entitlement, I wonder if she thinks it speaks to us today, given the wealth divide and the profligacy of the 1%? \u201cI see us in it,\u201d she says, but doesn\u2019t believe it\u2019s a perfect fit. \u201cI think it\u2019s even more timeless than the political situation right now, even though there\u2019s lots of resonance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, she believes, it\u2019s about the \u201coverwhelming terror we all have of change. It\u2019s wanting the best for your fellow man, but wait, what if it actually costs me something meaningful? In the case of my character, she is rich and she is maybe incredibly generous day-to-day [but also] participating in and profiting from a system that is causing a lot of suffering. And as a human being, she\u2019s suffered a lot.\u201d This includes the loss of a child. \u201cSo, on a personal level, if we step away from the politics of it, how do you move through your life as a person who has been through a lot of trauma?\u201d<\/p>\n

Hunt\u2019s father was a film, voice and stage director, and she fell in love with that world at the age of nine while taking an acting class. Did she ever want to do anything else? \u201cIt\u2019s so strange, it just happened. I went to an acting class not because I wanted to be an actor but because my aunt did. She\u2019s my age \u2013 we grew up as sisters and I spent summers with her. And that\u2019s what she did on Saturdays. So I went too. There was no big design. Honestly, 50 years later, I\u2019m still studying. The thing that was added was my writing and directing \u2013 trying to get my own thing off the ground, which was born from not getting enough jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Dream come true\u2019 \u2026 Hunt and Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets. Photograph: Tristar Pictures\/Allstar<\/p>\n

She\u2019s spoken before about the dearth of meaty female parts, which led to her taking things into her own hands<\/a>. Does she feel the market narrows as a result of Hollywood\u2019s oppressive focus on women\u2019s ages, bodies and faces? If so, how does she navigate that? \u201cYou just don\u2019t \u2013 because there\u2019s nothing you can do. I guess you could try to change how you look, but short of that there\u2019s nothing to do but make art if you are an artist. Whether you\u2019re hired or not, whether people like you or not, whether they like how you look or not, you just have to keep finding a way to be making work. That\u2019s how I have dealt with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her last London appearance was at the Old Vic four years ago in Jonathan Spector\u2019s Eureka Day<\/a>, a satire about liberal America in which she brilliantly played a passive-aggressive California liberal. There have been a few flashpoints in London theatres of late, involving actors and audiences: Lesley Manville expressed her disapproval of people taking videos during a final ovation and Rosamund Pike felt compelled to return to the stage after a show to talk about an audience member\u2019s texting.<\/p>\n

Does Hunt feel audience behaviour has changed and are there things she doesn\u2019t like? \u201cWell, phones have changed everything. I think we all just have to be on guard from how they keep us from being present. If you\u2019re looking at Rosamund Pike being brilliant through a five-inch rectangle instead of having your heart open and doing yourself the favour of being present with what she\u2019s doing \u2013 I think we all have to be careful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hunt learned to do herself this favour early. \u201cI would go to rehearsals with my father or see early productions of plays in New York. I knew I liked being in that room with creative people who were telling a story that could be sad or scary or funny. It wasn\u2019t real so there wasn\u2019t a danger. I never thought of being on the stage or off the stage. I just wanted to be around it. Then I took the [acting] class and someone saw me and put me in a movie and then another. I kept studying and kept working and you turn around and here you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Double triumph \u2026 Hunt and Jack Nicholson winning at the 1998 Oscars for As Good As It Gets. Photograph: Bob Riha Jr\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

She speaks about being influenced by two legendary RSC teachers: Cicely Berry<\/a> and John Barton<\/a>. \u201cI watched their work. When I began to think, \u2018Uh-oh, what if I get bored of being an actor?\u2019, I realised, well, when you really work on wonderful playwrights, Shakespeare and Chekhov to name two, you\u2019re never going to get bored because you\u2019re never going to be good enough to get bored. There will always be more to learn and the language will keep giving to you in a way that other kinds of language won\u2019t. So I\u2019ve so far not been bored.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is she driven by the desire to work in itself \u2013 or is it the role and the learning? \u201cNumber one, if I had to put it in order, would be the story. It doesn\u2019t have to be the best or biggest, but if I like the story, that\u2019s compelling. Good part: wonderful. Working: terrific. Money: also good when it\u2019s there. But I would say being part of telling a story that you find compelling would be the number one draw for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among her considerable film accomplishments are blockbusters such as Twister and As Good As It Gets, the latter opposite Jack Nicholson, for which she won an Oscar (she has also won four Emmys and four Golden Globes). What\u2019s striking about her Oscars speech<\/a> is how composed she is. What did she actually feel? \u201cI don\u2019t think \u2018composed\u2019 would be a word that many people would use in that moment. I felt \u2026 I don\u2019t know how I felt. Probably exhausted. Certainly, there\u2019s a little bit of a dream-come-true moment that happens alongside a whole lot of stressful focus on what are you wearing, who did you thank, who didn\u2019t win and a lot of other things.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also namechecked her fellow contenders and suggested the Oscar might have gone to Judi Dench for her performance in Mrs Brown (a film she said she watched three times). Was there an element of impostor syndrome? \u201cNo, I felt very proud of my work and very impressed by the work of those other women. Awards are fun and it\u2019s fun when it lands in your lap. But you can\u2019t help noticing that there\u2019s no comparing Judi Dench\u2019s work in that movie. It\u2019s not an Olympic relay \u2013 they can\u2019t quite be compared. [But] I\u2019d feel like an impostor if I didn\u2019t include the other performances.\u201d<\/p>\n

As someone who took part in the Women\u2019s March of 2017 \u2013 a protest on the day after the first inauguration of Donald Trump \u2013 how does Hunt feel about his second term? Does she feel it is a hard time to be creative, to be an actor? \u201cI think now\u2019s a hard time to be a human being, in my country certainly. But I\u2019m not sure how to translate it into what it\u2019s like to go to work.\u201d She pauses then rounds off her thoughts: \u201cYeah. It\u2019s a challenging time for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Cherry Orchard is at the Swan theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon 10 July to 29 August<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s lunchtime in Stratford-upon-Avon and Helen Hunt has 30 minutes to spare. She\u2019s preparing for her Royal Shakespeare…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":748566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":["post-748565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}