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Sometimes a middling performer comes out of nowhere and, surprising everyone, becomes the beneficiary of critical accolades unlike any she has heretofore received. Very often, such anomalous attention coincides with one or another of Hollywood's many awards ceremonies. There are two responses a celebrity can have to such a career development:
- She can accept her new status as an A-list performer, and choose each role to build on the one that earned her initial prestige (as Tom Hanks has, more or less, done throughout the '90s).
- She can call her agent from the Dorothy Chandler pavilion and tell him to choose the first several scripts off the pile and get her in those movies yesterday (a.k.a. John Travolta's approach).
The latter strategy is meant to keep that favoured performer in the public eye immediately following the acclaim in order to prolong whatever goodwill inheres in the role. In all but the most firmly ensconced of Hollywood luminaries, an Oscar™ nomination -- or, worse yet, a win -- can induce a panic in its recipient that can lead, say, a Kim Basinger to sign on for, say, a Bless the Child. We suspect Helen Hunt may have been feeling the same panic when she agreed to star in what seems to be every one of this fall's movies.
Okay, fine. She's only going to be in four movies between October and December 2000. But still, that's a lot of Helen Hunt, especially since most of us haven't seen her on the big screen since her brittle, snippy performance in As Good As It Gets left a bad taste in our mouths. Hunt's pre-AGAIG résumé boasts roles ranging from a murderous schoolteacher to an intrepid tornado chaser to a pioneering female football star. However, post-AGAIG, Hunt will play a succession of girlfriends (or objects of desire) for Hollywood's biggest stars: Kevin Spacey (in Pay It Forward), Richard Gere (in Dr. T. and the Women), Mel Gibson (in What Women Want), and Tom Hanks (in Cast Away). Granted, Fametracker has not seen any of these movies yet. But from what we've been able to surmise, the only thing that differentiates any of these fall movie roles from the others is that in Pay It Forward, Hunt's character is an alcoholic.
We've all heard Hollywood's most famous female actors complain about the dearth of good roles for women past the age of thirty. And yet, within the past five years, Jessica Lange has managed to play heroines from the works of Balzac, Shakespeare, and Tennessee Williams; Glenn Close has landed roles as a U.S. Vice-President, a prisoner of war, and a crazed Southern Belle; and super bad-ass Stockard Channing has played an LAPD detective, a white witch, and the U.S. First Lady. Helen Hunt -- who, unlike the three above-named actors, is still (officially) under the age of forty -- has somehow used her Oscar™ win to propel herself straight back into the Girlfriend Ghetto.
Couldn't these four interchangeable roles gone to four other actors -- ones with a less grating screen presence? What about Kyra Sedgwick? Rene Russo? Jennifer Jason Leigh? For the love of God and all that is holy, Allison Freakin' Janney? Are Helen Hunt's talents so unique that she must gobble up all the forgettable over-thirty girlfriend roles?
We submit that the only reason Helen Hunt is presiding over this embarrassment of fall-movie riches is that she's won an Oscar™, and not for playing an Elizabethan, nor a cross-dresser. No, Helen Hunt won her Oscar™ playing a normal, undistinguished woman. And the sad truth appears to be that she'll be playing tiny variations on that same normal, undistinguished woman for the rest of her career -- as long as her disproportionate fame obscures any number of other, equally or more talented actors -- and keeping People magazine abreast of her marital ups and downs all the while. Can't someone cut Kyra Sedgwick a break?
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