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The intense, independent Holly Hunter

Star honored at Sundance

By Paul Clinton
CNN

Holly Hunter
Holly Hunter

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Oscar-winning actress Holly Hunter was recognized for her lifetime of work in films at the Sundance Film Festival. CNN's Paul Clinton reports (January 23)
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PARK CITY, Utah (CNN) -- Every year the Sundance Film Festival names one performer to receive the Sundance Institute Tribute to Independent Vision. This year's honoree is Academy Award winner Holly Hunter.

Hunter has two films here -- "Levity," co-starring Billy Bob Thornton, Morgan Freeman and Kirsten Dunst, which debuted here earlier in the week; and "thirteen," which is in competition for best dramatic film, and which was bought by Fox Searchlight films after its first screening at the festival.

Hunter's independent credentials are impeccable. From her work with the Coen brothers in "Raising Arizona," to "O Brother, Where Art Thou," to her roles in "Miss Firecracker," "Crash" and "The Piano" (for which she won the Oscar), Hunter has carried the banner of the indie spirit. CNN sat down and talked to the very busy actress at the festival right before she received her award.

CNN: Going through the research I see you've won just about every award in the book. How does this fit into the spectrum of the Golden Globe, the Academy Award, the Cable ACE Award, every critic's award in the world ... everything but the Tony?

HUNTER: Damn it (laughs). This is different because this is for ... what I've done so far. I'm kind of, well, I'm thrilled. That's all.

CNN: When you think about all the people who have won in the past, [the Sundance award] is really an honor. What Robert Redford has done -- what independent film has done -- has changed the face of the industry.

HUNTER: The transformation of independent movie actors, and the way that independent film is made, has totally changed. I think the Sundance Institute has been responsible for that in many ways. First-time directors get a chance to work with incredible actors. ... Actors are now able, and willing, to be very flexible with how they make money. You can do an independent movie and make very little up front. And that behooves everyone really, especially the creative community. It gives me opportunities that don't come my way if movies are made for much more money.

CNN: Is it just serendipitous -- a coincidence -- that you have two movies here at the festival at the same time you're getting the honor?

HUNTER: That's just an act of serendipity and it's so wonderful for both movies. For both "Levity," which I did with Ed Solomon directing, and "thirteen" it's just been great. I mean, I made the two movies with a lot of time in between. They just happened to work out this way.

CNN: You've never been into career building. You've never looked for the big movie star thing, having a trailer and 18 assistants, that whole route. You don't seem to have been interested in that.

HUNTER: How you are in life is a manifestation of who you are. Each one of us has a path and I'm on mine and I really would have no specific regrets or goals. I've let this path dictate what I do.

CNN: After your huge success in "Broadcast News," you seemed to have disappeared for awhile.

start quoteHow you are in life is a manifestation of who you are. Each one of us has a path and I'm on mine and I really would have no specific regrets or goals.end quote
-- Holly Hunter

HUNTER: That happens so often. People go "What have you been doing?" and "Oh my God, you've been off for seven years." No, actually I've been doing movies that have not, like, kicked.

CNN: Being the youngest of, what, six kids, did that maybe bring you into acting, getting attention being the youngest? Did that inform your choice to become an actress?

HUNTER: You have to understand that by the time I came along my parents were basically, "You guys raise yourselves," they had so many. It was a great family full of natural entertainers, particularly two of my older brothers. So I did not take the limelight there; I made my own when I first hit the stage in high school. That's where I went, "Oh good, I get a little attention now!"

CNN: You were doing repertory theater when you were 15, so there has never been any doubt in your mind acting was it?

HUNTER: No, no, no.

CNN: No?

HUNTER: Want me to say it again? (smiles)

CNN: One of your roommates in New York later married somebody who became important in your life.

HUNTER: That's right. Frances McDormand, who was in "Fargo" and won an Academy Award -- a great, great performance -- she and I were roommates in the North Bronx for about a year.

And then she did "Blood Simple" with Joel Coen directing and they got together. And then Fran moved out and left me for Joel.

CNN: I understand that "Raising Arizona" was written for you by the Coen brothers.

HUNTER: Yeah, yeah, they did do that. After we'd been friends -- because I'd gotten to know the Coens through Fran, that was in 1982 -- and then in 1985, after we'd been hanging out for about three years, the Coens presented this script to me and said, "Look, we wrote this part for you and tell us what you think." Of course it's one of the best movies I've ever done.

CNN: Well, we can't forget "The Piano." Is that a benchmark in your career, something you'll never achieve again?

HUNTER: Please don't say that (holds her head in her hands). Well, I'm never going to achieve something like "The Piano" again and that's good, because there is nothing like it. But of course I always long for, and hope for, experiences that transport me. That's what all actors -- what we all -- are out there seeking: to be redeemed by a great script.

CNN: I read somewhere that you're a very intense person, and you may be ... an intense person because you listen really intently, maybe because of the deafness?

HUNTER: I think that definitely shaped me --some of my behavior --just being with other people. I had the mumps, I think when I was nine, and I became deaf in my left ear totally. I think that perhaps, because I've had to listen so intently to what people are saying, that it might have made me more of an intense-seeming listener.

CNN: How does it make you feel when a movie you love, like "Living Out Loud," doesn't make it, doesn't get out there? As an actress it's out of your control.

HUNTER: It's very frustrating, of course. It is, because you have all these other lives when you're making a movie. You have the life you have only with yourself when you're preparing, and then you have the life with the crew and the cast and the director, and then the life of the movie when it's with the world. And you want people to see it if it turns out well.

And of course it's a disappointment with there is something missing in the translation. And it's a very difficult job -- distributing and mounting a campaign for a movie. It's perhaps, in a way, the most fragile, vulnerable hitch in the road that the movie's going down.

CNN: You've made some amazing choices. It must be really hard to not work because you're an actress -- you want to work -- so you must go through pile after pile of bad scripts. It must be so frustrating.

HUNTER: Yes, but it's like Morgan Freeman said at a press conference, you know, there are a million great actors and there are a thousand great scripts. And that's the balance, or imbalance.


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