Tough men go dippy in her presence. They look beyond the blondness and see a questing intelligence, a wit that can sting or caress and, in the corners of her smile, a hint that with the right guy, she wouldn't mind messing around a bit. So, in Twister, a meteorologist (Bill Paxton) runs away with her, ditching his fiance to wildcat after tornadoes. On Mad About You, her TV husband (Paul Reiser) can't stop rhapsodizing. "I'm admiring a beautiful girl who married me for some reason," he says, and "all I know is that I want to wake up with you naked for the rest of my life." Rush these puppies to the ER--they're lovesick.
Now let's hand her a real challenge: the world's meanest man. This guy, a writer named Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson), can't even think about gays, blacks, Jews, Hispanics, women or little sick kids without making an acid slur. But long before the end of As Good As It Gets, the buoyant new bauble from TV- and movie-comedy master James L. Brooks (the Mary Tyler Moore Show, Terms of Endearment), Melvin is converted; he realizes that this woman, with her aggrieved look and a tongue as sharp as Cheddar, is his redeemer. He gulps hard and tells her, "You make me want to be a better man."
The Helen Hunt woman doesn't vamp. She has no outlaw swagger. She doesn't ratchet her I.Q. down 15 or 20 points to make the boys feel better. She refuses to play the little girl or the doomed diva. Or the perfect woman either, for she knows that flourishing at the end of this millennium is an art and a craft, and not many are up to it. But she has the grit to try. She attracts men, and appeals to other women, by being her own complicated self. Determined woman, staunch friend, strong mate: the sensible siren.
By all logic, Helen Hunt--even the name is defiantly sensible--should not be a major multimedia star of the '90s. No one should be, for television and film have become only distantly related media. TV appeals to the broad middle-aged, movies to the young and younger. The living room is the woman's domain, the cineplex a guys' clubhouse. TV bathes in social reassurance; movies strut toward sociopathic threat. Not many performers commute between the two with much profit or comfort. Yet Hunt has one of the 10 highest Q ratings (recognizability plus likability) of all women in entertainment, and her most recent movie, Twister, was the second top-grossing film of 1996.
Listen to Hunt's colleagues speak of her, and you may wonder if she is not as good as it gets but too good to be true. Nicholson: "She's a juggernaut of ability. You can lean on her. She's a great gal, as we used to say. She's a babe." Reiser: "She's a mix of two powerful things: she's deliberate, very precise, knows what she wants; and she's really game, willing to take risks. As an actress, she's really inspiring." Victor Levin, executive producer of Mad About You: "She can talk about anything. Plus she has an alacritive wit--not just funny but fast." It is said that no star is a heroine to her makeup artist, but here's Hunt's: "She's so yummy looking," says Jeanine Lobell. "Like cashmere: elegant but cozy."