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Met is lunchtime in Stratford-on-Avon and Helen Hunt has 30 minutes to spare. He is preparing for her The Royal Shakespeare Company debut and he’s taking the time to talk to me via Zoom, his head and shoulders, what appears to be a pretty kitchen behind him. Hunt is a good look: a polite smile, even a speech and an immobility so steady it makes me wonder what’s roaring beneath the surface.
Hunt is playing along Kenneth Branagh and Bill Pullman in the new version of The Cherry Orchard. She plays Madame Ranevskaya, a Russian noblewoman and matriarch who returns home to find her family’s fortune in jeopardy. This play, like many of Chekhov’s, deals with the apathy of the elite in the dying days of the Russian Empire. What about this play, for him, and why now?
“Honestly,” he says, “it’s a very good question for a director, especially.” Oh? “It’s different if I make a film or direct a play. about mewhy now? I think…” Yes, for you.” He listed his reasons: “One of the great screenwriters. An impossible beast of a role. An excellent director (Tamara Harvey) whose ideas and techniques impressed me.”
And there’s Branagh, who plays self-made entrepreneur Lopakhin. Hunt didn’t know he’d be in it when he got on board but he’s a big fan. “My father was an acting teacher who took me to his film of Henry V and I thought, ‘Wait, is it possible? That the verse could be alive so vividly, passionately and poetically, that I could understand it so clearly, that it could be as entertaining as any action film.'”
Hunt, now 63, is delighted to be making it back to the RSC. “My favorite work is the one that’s been done here so I’m happy and excited, honestly.” Since The Cherry Orchard is a drama about class and freedom, I wonder if they think it speaks to us today, because of the division of wealth and the manipulation of the 1%? “I see us that way,” he says, but he doesn’t believe it’s enough. “I think it’s a lot better than it is right now, even though there are a lot of problems.”
In the end, he believes, it is about “the biggest risk that we all have. I want the best for my partner, but wait, what if it costs me something meaningful? In terms of my character, he is rich and maybe very generous every day (and) participates and benefits from a lot of pain, which causes people to suffer a lot. This includes the death of a child. “So, on a personal level, if we leave aside his politics, how do you go about your life as a person who has experienced much pain?” Hunt’s father was a film, sound and stage director, and he first fell in love with the country at the age of nine when he was taking an acting class. Did he want to do anything else? “It’s amazing, it just happened. I went to acting class not because I wanted to be an actor but because my aunt did. She’s my age – we grew up like sisters and I spend summers with her. And that’s what he did on Saturday. So I went again. There was no grand design. Honestly, 50 years later, I’m still learning – I’m still learning, what I was trying to do to get what I had. born because of not getting enough jobs.”
He talked about hunger female parts with meat, which caused him to take things into his own hands. Does she feel that the market is shrinking because of Hollywood’s pressure on women’s ages, bodies and faces? If so, how do they manage that? “You don’t – because there’s nothing you can do. I think you can try to change the way you look, but in short there’s nothing you can do but make art if you’re an artist. Whether you’re hired or not, whether people like you or not, whether they like you or not, you just keep finding a way to make work. That’s how I deal with it.”
His last London appearance was at the Old Vic four years ago in Jonathan Spector’s Eureka Daya tale of American freedom in which he played a loose and aggressive Californian. There have been several shows in London theater of late, involving actors and audiences: Lesley Manville showed her hatred of people taking videos during the finale and Rosamund Pike was forced to return to the stage after the show to talk about a member of the audience.
Does Hunt feel that the behavior of the audience has changed and there are things they don’t like? “Well, phones have changed everything. I think we should all be careful not to get caught.” If you’re looking for Rosamund Pike to be smart about five inch corners instead open your heart and do it. yourself the kindness of being there and what they are doing – I think we should all pay attention. “
Hunt learned to do this for himself recently. “I would go to rehearsals with my father or see the premieres in New York. I knew that I loved being in the room with creative people who were telling a story that could be sad or scary or funny. It was not real so there was no danger. I never thought about being on stage or off stage. I just wanted to be close to it. Then I took (doing a film and reading) and put me in a classroom. You are still working and you turn around and here you are.”
He talks about adopting two famous RSC teachers: Cicely Berry and John Barton. “I looked at their work.” When I started to think, ‘Oh, what if I get tired of being an actor?’, I realized clearly, when you work on wonderful playwrights, Shakespeare and Chekhov to name two, you will not be tired because you will not be well enough to be tired. so far he is not tired.”
Are they driven by a desire to master themselves – or is it part and parcel of learning? “Number one, if I had to put it well, it would be the story. It doesn’t have to be great or great, but if I like the story, it’s compelling. The good part: amazing. The work: terrible. The money: good if it’s there. But I would say that being part of telling a story that you think is important would be the first draw for me.”
Among his major film roles are blockbusters such as Twister and As Good As It Gets, the latter opposite Jack Nicholson, for which he won an Oscar (he has also won four Emmys and four Golden Globes). Which affects him Oscars speech and how they were made. How did he feel? “I don’t think ‘made’ would be a word that many people would use at that time. I felt… I don’t know how I felt. Maybe I was very tired. Of course, there is a short period of dreaming that happens along with a lot of stress about what you are wearing, who you thanked, who didn’t win and so on.”
He also mentioned his fellow contenders and said that the Oscar should have gone to Judi Dench for her role in Mrs Brown (a film she said she watched three times). Is there an impostor syndrome? “No, I was very proud of my work and I was very impressed with the work of the other women. The award is exciting and exciting when it comes into your hands. But you can’t help but notice that there is no comparison with the work of Judi Dench in this film. It is not an Olympic competition – it cannot be compared.
As someone who took part in the 2017 Women’s March – a protest the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration – how does Hunt feel about his second term? Do you think it’s a difficult time to create, to be an actor? “I think now is a difficult time for me to be human, in my country for sure. But I don’t know how to describe what it’s like to go to work.” He pauses and then finishes his thoughts: “Yes, it is a difficult time indeed.
