I made a comment once before about feeling like Helen Hunt was in everything for a stretch there after she won her Oscar. Well, she certainly pulled one over on me, because now I’m the idiot who had no idea she’s been on Hacks since season three! Hacks has been on my list of shows to start for a while, but somehow keeps getting bumped for other things. I will be rectifying that now, I swear! So Helen appears on the June cover of Flow Space to promote the fourth season, and the interview is full of intelligence and charm. And also a bit of pain; it seems Helen is unaware that the comfortable shoes on the red carpet revolution is already underfoot! The full article is worth a read, but I’ve excerpted a few highlights, including the opening where she talks about having to break out of her heels at a 2024 Oscars party:
She had to take her heels off at the 2024 VF Oscars party: “I was like, ‘This had to be done. I have to be done now—I can’t walk!,’” she recalls. “I cannot walk. I cannot walk to get my drink at the bar or my In-N-Out Burger, which they serve. There has to be a new ethos about women and shoes. I want them to invent a new way to do it without hurting your feet!”
Her career exploding in the 90s led her to meditation: “I was just, like, pushing myself with no thought of, ‘Well, maybe it’s too much,’” she recalls. “My body went, ‘It’s too much.’” That’s when a friend first suggested she try meditation. “I went, ‘Oh, right.’ I took a class when I was 18 and thought it would change my life and then blew it off,” she says. “But pain is a really good motivator.” She has now maintained a daily, 20-minute practice for more than three decades. “Just showing up and doing it, over time, I think it matters,” she says. “For me, it’s not even like I want to do it to feel good. Now I have to do it to not feel bad!”
On dealing with body shaming tabloids when she was younger: “It felt impossible not to internalize the way you’re supposed to look,” Hunt reveals. “And [there was] a certain amount of misery and shame around not looking exactly that way.” At some point, however, “I realized, ‘This could quietly ruin your whole life,’” Hunt says, adding that she rarely talks about this aspect of her Hollywood experience. “I made a decision: I’m not playing. Not gonna [let it] take up a lot of space in my mind.” Notes her longtime friend and Mad About You co-star Paul Reiser, “She has always been terrifically centered and forthright about setting up boundaries.”
How she got into surfing: “I saw a woman in Hawaii who, like, jumped out of the water, picked up her baby, pulled her bathing suit down, nursed, gave her baby back to, presumably, the baby’s dad, and went back to the water,” Hunt recalls. “I was like, I want to be her.”
She’s a college student! She also still has aspirations of being a college graduate, a rite of passage she missed out on to pursue her career. “It was always an unchecked box,” she says, explaining her decision to sign up for college-level English courses. “I’m checking it very slowly.” Which is a pace that helps keep her moving steadily forward—the direction she prefers to focus on.
I love that Helen’s taking college classes! I have a friend doing a similarly protracted march towards his graduate degree, a method I call the “low and slow” approach to higher education. In addition to checking off that graduation box, Helen says she views the courses as “an antidote to Instagram strolling.” (Hey kids, reading works for that, too!) I’m not surprised to hear Helen meditates daily, because she really does sound so clear and centered. Part of that is just living and growing and aging, I know. Helen’s now an empty-nester (her daughter Makena is 22 and in a band), and enjoying a once-and-again relationship with Jeffrey Nordling, after they first dated in 1988. (Jeffrey played Laura Dern’s husband in Big Little Lies, and longtime fans will know him from Once and Again, hence the earlier wordplay.) It seems like she’s in a really good head and heart space — she just needs to liberate her feet! My word of advice: don’t settle for merely “bearable” like her fellow Helen, Ms. Mirren. Aim higher! By lowering the heel.
PS — I also want to be that surfing, nursing Hawaiian mama.
Photos credit: Jeffrey Mayer/Avalon, Getty and via Instagram
Don’t come for me but Streep has the career Helen Hunt deserves.
Back at the height of her career some magazine called her “the thinking man’s blonde.” Spot on.
@TOM….YASS❣️❣️❣️❣️❣️
It may not be the best of movies, but I always liked Then She Found Me. With Bette Midler and a quite lovely Colin Firth.
She looks amazing and I want all her clothes, especially the sequined pants and slouchy chenille sweater.
Those chunky black heels are 🔥! I don’t wear heels any more tho. I do have a new ethos. I walk as much as I can every day, so I only wear shoes that I can walk in. Plenty of brands make work appropriate, comfortable shoes. Rockport. Naturalizer. And that’s just the ones in my price range.
Same here! All my shoes have to be walkable, which can be limiting. But I have my Docs and quite like Campers’ flats.
I love she’s taking classes as I’m another in that boat. Did 2 years after high school, realized I didnt have the aptitude, or maybe just didn’t want to do the work, to be an engineer, and have gone back in fits and starts for 30+ years. My goal/hope is to finish before my nephew finishes college (2 more years).
As for shoes, at this point 99% of what I own/wear is sneakers. Have a couple pair of nice shoes for summer and winter when I running/lifestyle sneakers are just too casual, but that’s it.
And I too want to learn to surf, just need to strengthen the wonky knee.
I’ve always admired celebrities who go back/to school. One never stops learning, and college teaches you so much more than just information. And it’s invaluable as a grounding method—a way to have life outside the fame bubble.
She isn’t in Hacks all that much but please come for the Jean Smart of it all!
I think she looks great. Like a movie star from the Golden Age, where she looks like an individual. I loved her in A Good Woman, after an Oscar Wilde play. I am shopping for comfy shoes that are also supportive and cute. I call them cranky feet.
A Good Woman is so good.
Orthopedic support shoes have come a long way, Helen. Check out brands like Vionic and Joseph Siebel.