Background
Holly Hunter was born on 20 March 1958 in Conyers, Georgia, United States.
Holly Hunter was born on 20 March 1958 in Conyers, Georgia, United States.
She came from rural Georgia (not far from Tara) and studied at Carnegie Mellon.
Her debut was in The Burning (81, Tony Maylam), after which she played on TV in Svengali (83, Anthony Harvey); With Intent to Kill (84, Mike Robe); Swing Shift (84, Jonathan Demme); Raising Arizona (81, loel Coen); A Gathering of Old Men (87, Volker Schlondorff); End of the Line (87, Jay Russell); getting her first best actress nomination in Broadcast News (87, James L. Brooks); repeating a stage success in Beth Henley's Miss Firecracker (89, Thomas Schlamme); Animal Behavior (89, II. Anne Roley); getting an Emmy as “Roe” in Roe v. Wade (89, Gregorv Hoblit); Always (89, Steven Spielberg); Once Around (91, Lasse Hallstrom); Crazy in Love (92, Martha Coolidge); verv funny and Oscar-nominated as the secretary in The Firm (93, Sydney Pollack); and brilliant in The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader- Murdering Mom (93, Michael Ritchie).
She continues to be adventurous, going from TV and provincial theatre to film—and even then few films in the mainstream. But she is one ol several living examples that the American mainstream is now dysfunctional: the cop in Copycat (95, Jon Amiel); Home for the Holidays (95. Jodie Foster); Crash (96, David Cronenberg); from heaven in A Life Less Ordinary (97, Danny Boyle); excellent in Living Out Loud (98, Richard LaGravenese); Jesus’ Son (99, Alison Maclean); at her best in Woman W anted (99, Kiefer Sutherland); Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her (00, Rodrigo Garcia); Timecode (00, Mike Figgis); O Brother Where Art Thou? (00, Coen); and then to TV for a pair of admirable real-life stories: Harlan Comity Whir (00, Tony Bill), and as Billie Jean King in When Billie Beat Bobby (01. Jane Anderson).
No wonder Jane Campion had some reservations when Holly Hunter sought the central role in The Piano (93). Hunter had established herself as a tinv fireball of energy, Southern abrasiveness, and talk, talk, talk. She was pretty, yet she easilv offered the look of a modern Southern shoppingmall belle. But Hunter created the severe, less- than-dainty look of a nineteenth-century woman repressed in nearly everything except silent pride. She delivered a stunning performance, and in doing so she expanded her own horizons and won the Oscar.