American actress
Holly Patricia Hunter (born March 20, 1958) is an American actress. Her accolades include an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award and two Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2008, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
For her performance as Ada McGrath in the 1993 drama film The Piano, Hunter won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She earned three additional Academy Award nominations for Broadcast News (1987), The Firm (1993) and Thirteen (2003). For her roles in the television films Roe vs. Wade (1989), and The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom (1993), she won two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie. She also starred in the TNT drama series Saving Grace (2007–2010).
Hunter's other film roles include Raising Arizona (1987), Always (1989), Home for the Holidays (1995), Crash (1996), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), The Incredibles (2004), its sequel Incredibles 2 (2018), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), and The Big Sick (2017), the latter of which earned her a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role.
I've never worked as much as I would've wanted to, and that's why I end up doing a lot of stage as well, because stage is a full course meal
I think it's really odd, too, that the public is so privy to how much money the actors make and what movies cost. It seems to me to be beside the point. When I go to a movie I really don't want to think about the money. I want to see the story.
I've never directed, but it must be humbling.
It's the same with people knowing absolutely everything there is to know about an actor. I actually think the more personal information you have about an actor, the more you have to carve out for yourself when you go to a movie and see them in it
I would love to work more - I really would - but there is not a lot of stuff around and the stuff that is around is not very complicated; it tends to lie a little flat
More and more movies have been pressured to allow reporters and TV cameras to come onto the set while you're working, and I find that a real violation
The rhythm of my career has always been very static, staccato and then silent, and then a lot of work, and then none
I act probably a lot more than you see. I happen to choose movies that don't have much of a life, or I choose movies that are shown on cable instead of as features
When you spend many hours a week working with the same people - I mean television operates on really amazing hours and the gift of that is the trust that you feel and the intimacy that you feel with the people who you're working with.
I'm basically talking to the audience, standing alone, describing the weather. It's very rudimentary, the dialogue, saying what the weather is like that day.
Mothers and daughters can stay very connected during teenage years. In the middle of your life, you can become very alone. Even though you're connected deeply to other family members, lovers, husbands, friends.
In some ways, it would be nice to stay younger, but I feel pretty happy about growing older... Personally, I don't have a lot of the regular hand-ups with getting older that some people do. I've never tried to disguise my age. People find out anyway.
I get cold really quickly, but I don't care. I like weather. I never understand why people move someplace so that they can avoid weather.
Real quality in roles is very hard to come by. Any actor or actress will tell you that. Great movies are hard to come by. It's almost impossible to make one, and most people have to settle for making something less.
I think that my looks through the years have served me well because I was never a great beauty and I was never cast as a great beauty. My looks were not part of my transportation - certainly not in the typical leading lady role - so I never leaned on it and I never really made that a high value.
Drama is always conflict. Conflict either comes from within or without. The thing that makes a show different is the conflict manifests itself both internally and externally.
I feel that I'm a spiritual person in that I feel like telling stories is a spiritual exercise and I think that it's something that we need as a culture and as humans. We need for people to put stories up in front of us that we recognize ourselves so that we can see - you need to be able to see something in a finite form in order to identify with it sometimes because your life sprawls before you in this kind of way that you can't capture.
It's not the dress ... it's the way you see me.
I've never had a career of that kind of box office power. I've always learned the hard way
I got on stage and I went, "Oh wow. No stage fright." I couldn't do public speaking, and I couldn't play the piano in front of people, but I could act. I found that being on stage, I felt, "This is home." I felt an immediate right thing, and the exchange between the audience and the actors on stage was so fulfilling. I just went, "That is the conversation I want to have."
In storytelling you kind of put your nightmares up there, you put your dreams up there and people can see them better because they can stand outside of it and look at it and recognize themselves inside it. So I feel that that in and of itself is a spiritual thing.
I really admire people who are extraordinarily tolerant and patient.