Helen Hunt

Born: 15th June 1963
Where: Los Angeles, California, USA

The actress was thrust into the limelight when she landed a best actress Oscar for the black comedy As Good As It Gets.

She also holds the record for being the only actress to win a Golden Globe, an Oscar and an Emmy in the same calendar year.

The daughter of director and acting coach Gordon Hunt, she first acted at the age of eight and made her TV debut in the 1973 movie Pioneer Woman.

After concentrating on TV work, she made her big screen debut aged 10 in the "sensurround" action yarn Rollercoaster in 1977.

One of her first notable adult roles was as the girlfriend of Dr Jack Morrison (David Morse) in the drama series St Elsewhere.

After a series of varied supporting roles, she received several awards including two Emmys, as Jamie Buchman in the weekly comedy series Mad About You.

In 1986, she starred alongside Nicolas Cage and Kathleen Turner in the comedy drama Peggy Sue Got Married and went on to a supporting role in Stealing Home.

Her role as a married woman having an affair with a paraplegic writer in The Waterdance attracted attention and she went on to play Billy Crystal's talent agent in Mr Saturday Night.

The hurricane caper Twister proved an unexpected success before she was cast opposite Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets when Holly Hunter dropped out.

In 2000, she starred alongside Kevin Spacey in the romantic drama Pay It Forward and had a supporting role in Cast Away with Tom Hanks.

Roles followed in the Mel Gibson comedy What Women Want and Woody Allen cast her in the comedy Curse of the Jade Scorpion.

Hunt was briefly married to fellow actor Hank Azaria.

In 2004, she played the gold-digging Mrs Erlynne in A Good Woman, Mike Barker's adaptation of Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan.