Helen Hunt

Her father, director Gordon Hunt, had her on set at 8 and in front of a camera professionally at 9, which sounds like a child actor horror story but actually worked. She spent the 80s collecting forgettable TV credits before Mad About You turned her into one of the highest-paid women on television, earning $1 million per episode at its peak. The film work followed, Twister first, then As Good as It Gets, which landed her an Oscar at the 70th Academy Awards. She became the second actress ever to sweep Oscar, Golden Globe, and Emmy in the same calendar year. Holly Hunter had passed on the role first.

After the Oscar, she mostly walked away from the studio machine, not because the offers dried up. She has said she didn't enjoy mass fame. The work since has been selective: indie films, a Mad About You revival in 2019, a supporting turn in Hacks Season 3, theater runs at The Old Vic and Chicago's Goodman Theatre. TIME put her on a list of post-Oscar career disappointments in 2012, which looks sillier every year she works on her own terms. A Lifetime Achievement Award at the Taormina Film Festival in 2025 suggests Europe understood before Hollywood did.

In 1982, she played a teen who jumps out of a window while on PCP in a TV movie called Desperate Lives, then referenced the scene during her Saturday Night Live monologue in 1994 as a punchline. She married Hank Azaria in July 1999 and the marriage lasted 17 months. Her father wasn't just her first acting coach; he was an actual working director who kept training actors professionally for decades. She directed two features herself, Then She Found Me in 2007 and Ride in 2014, both of which she also wrote.