HELEN HUNTS FOR HANK'S HEART Public success at the Oscars has led to personal downturn for actress Helen Hunt With her Oscar win and the new $55 million dollar contract for her sitcom Mad About You, Helen Hunt should be on top of the world. Instead she's down in the dumps because her huge success has sparkes jealous rows with fiance Hank Azaria. He feels overshadowed by Helen and reportedly refuses to set a date for their wedding- because he feels their marriage wouldn't last.At the age of 34, Helen has spent three-quarters of her life in front of the camera and it's hard for her to imagine not putting work before love. California raised Helen started acting when she was just 10, appearing in TV series like The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the early 1970's. From that early age, she was driven by her ambitions and begged her parents to allow her time off school to make TV shows. "When I was six or seven and living in Manhattan, my father took me to the thatre three times a week. We saw everything. Shakespeare, musicals, oh, and remember Godspell? I don't know what happened to me because I'm not even religious, but I thought it was just magical. I always knew acting was something I wanted to do." "We made a deal," remembers her dad, director Gordon Hunt. "She could work as long as she had a B average at school. With most kids, if they get a B, you promise them a vacation. With Helen if she goe a B, she got to work. Work was her playtime." At 19 she was studying acting in New York and winning small roles such as Peggy Sue Got Married. Then in 1992 she beat Teri hatcher to win the role as Jamie Buchman in Mad About You. Her co-star from that show, Paul Reiser, says she's inspiring, producer Victor Levin says she's "not just funny, but fast" and her make-up artist Jeanine Lobell describes her as "yummy looking, Like cashmere- elegant but cosy". Despite the praise, Helen admits she was nervous about her role as Carol Connelly who transforms churlish Jack Nicholson into a nice guy in As Good As It Gets. "I wanted to be good in it. Desperately. Like every actor, when you get a big challenge, a part of you immediately feels like you don't know how to do it. You think, "I've never acted in my life before. I have no idea, I'm gonna mess up the whole movie.' "I was also nervous to work with Jack Nicholson because I thought he'd just be this movie star all the time. he was the opposite. I think he went out of his way to make me feel like his equal and his leading lady. I just can't say enough good things about him" The pair actually did much of the rehearsing for the film while at the Atlanta Olympics. "Jack had already planned to go to the Olympics and so had I. So the director Jim Brooks said, 'Well then I'm going. And we're rehearsing.'So we all got on the plane. Then, before we'd watch Michael Johnson run, we'd have these very odd rehearsals in the hotel room. I honestly can say I had more fun at the Olympics than I've ever had, ever." Winning the Best Actress Oscar for As Good As It Gets isn't a cue for Helen to slow down and strive for a more balanced life. Far from it. "I keep trying to do new things," she says. "I'm going to direct three episodes of Mad About You this year. I'm scared witless about that. And also excited, because I've been working very hard to learn how to do it. I've got three movies in development, one of which I'll be directing. I keep tryingnot to do the same thing I've done before, and that keeps me scared. A wonderful, horrible, endless loop." Helen is a stickler for research and preparation. For her role as Carol Cinnelly, she spent time with a mother caring for a sick child, worked with a dialogue coach to change her accent and ensured that her wardrobe was drab enough for the role. She did the same in-depth research when she made the tornado movie Twister. "I researched that psychologically and meteorologically, and went to visit the National Severe Storms Lab in Oklahoma." Helen is well aware that the intensity of her working habits is threatening her personal life- in particular her relationship with live-in love, Hank, which is currently hitting a crisis point. "We're very close and we're happy. But we also work a lot so there's a juggling act going on." Tellingly, her biggest worry is that her single minded quest for success could end up damaging her unique skills as an actress. "I'm a big believer that, if your work eats up your personal life, it doesn't make you a better actor." she says, "It probabably makes you a worse actor, a cranky actor." Ask Helen whether she's worried that she and Hank still haven't formalised their commitment to one another and she looks troubled. "Marriage? I don't know.I've never been married, but then I've never sat there and thought, 'I want to be married by this age, have children by that age.' With relationships, I think I'd rather have a man tell me than me tell him. I'd like to have children but that's a big commitment. I think what I'm doing is easy compared to what woman with kids do." She will admit that the Helen Hunt we saw up on the podium clutching her Oscar, with her swept up hair and blue satin evening dress, is a million miles away from the real thing. "When I'm seen out in public, I have to take care about my image," she says. "I'm usually a fairly private person but for an awards ceremony I borrow an outfit, smile for the cameras and do the movie star bit. I's just part of the game."
