‘Bored? You’re never good enough to get bored!’ Oscar-winner Helen Hunt on great roles, unruly audiences and her RSC debut
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- Helen Hunt, 63, is making her Royal Shakespeare Company debut in a new version of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, playing Madame Ranevskaya alongside Kenneth Branagh (as self-made businessman Lopakhin) and Bill Pullman, directed by Tamara Harvey.
- Hunt frames the play's core as 'the overwhelming terror we all have of change,' calling her character 'rich and maybe incredibly generous day-to-day but also participating in and profiting from a system that is causing a lot of suffering,' and adds that it's 'even more timeless than the political situation right now.'
- Hunt says she turned to writing and directing out of 'not getting enough jobs,' citing Hollywood's focus on women's ages, bodies, and faces: 'short of [changing how you look] there's nothing to do but make art if you are an artist.'
- Hunt credits RSC teachers Cicely Berry and John Barton for shaping her craft, telling the interviewer: 'when you really work on wonderful playwrights… you're never going to get bored because you're never going to be good enough to get bored.'
- Hunt won her Academy Award for As Good As It Gets opposite Jack Nicholson and has four Emmys and four Golden Globes; in her speech she namechecked fellow contender Judi Dench for Mrs Brown, saying she 'would feel like an impostor' if she omitted the other performances.
- Hunt says 'phones have changed everything' in theatre and urges audiences to be 'present' rather than watching performers 'through a five-inch rectangle,' echoing recent complaints from Lesley Manville and Rosamund Pike about unruly London audiences.
- Hunt, who took part in the 2017 Women's March, says 'now's a hard time to be a human being, in my country certainly' under Donald Trump's second term, but adds she's unsure how that translates into going to work as an actor.
Why it matters: Hunt's RSC debut at 63 — alongside Branagh in a Tamara Harvey-helmed revival — is a marquee booking for the company and a rare late-career stage turn for an Oscar winner who has publicly struggled to find meaty parts in Hollywood. Her comments on phones in theatres and on performing under Trump's second term link her Chekhov debut to two live debates currently roiling British stages and American cultural life.
