What in God's name happened to Helen Hunt's face?

Looks like she had cosmetic surgery that tightened her face too much. Then it looks like she tried to have it corrected, which resulted in her skin being pulled downward.

Very unfortunate look for her.

Just looks saggy to me - she's 56.

P.S. Why don't you go to Helen Hunt for it? (har har, had to be said)

I think she looks great!

There is something feline about it now.

She doesn’t even look like Helen Hunt any more.

She and Annette Bening must have lied about their ages somehow. Annette is officially 61 but looks 75. Hunt looks 65 is she's a day.

It seemed like she was having trouble speaking normally in the movie posted above. Almost like a mild stroke victim. A bit of the Faye Dunaway (Planet of the Apes-style) top lip.

God bless Seth MacFarlane:

I want her to play me in a biopic.

She was in World On Fire recently, alongside Lesley Manville, not that they shared any scenes.

Manville, who is in her early 60s, looked radiant, but Hunt, who is in her mid 50s, just looked odd.

The performance was decent, but her face was just so distracting.

I watched "I See You" too a few days ago - it's supposed to be a thriller but Hunt's face pushed it more into the horror genre. And her face wasn't even what annoyed me the most about her; her awful performance was even more distracting.

I still can't believe she won an Oscar for "As Good as it Gets." She was awful in it. Sometimes she had a (bad) New York accent, sometimes she didn't. And I didn't for a second buy her as a hardened working class waitress.

In OP's pic, I thought that was Lesbian icon and frau fave Fiona "Killing Eve" Shaw.

Is it a thriller when you want the lead actress to get slashed?

Everything about her face now points downward. Her eyes and especially that awful mouth. She looks like David in A.I. after he eats the spinach.

She would be great as a Star Trek alien. Just add some bumps to her forehead and she’s good to go.

It appears that she did a skin tightening procedure, like Thermage and laser resurfacing, but if you look at this screencap, it's apparent that her eyes and the area around her lips are untouched. The skin is uncannily smooth everywhere else, and then tons of sagging and wrinkles on the eyes and around mouth. She should have gone with and mid face lift and an eye job to lift all that up. And a gentle resurfacing around the mouth so the texture difference isn't that jarring.

She was never that good looking to begin with and now she looks like a literal Halloween witch.

Maybe she can get it fixed once the quarantine period is over.

Yeah I was going to say it looks like she had a face lift but didn't get her mouth done. Trying to avoid those awful big fake caterpillar lips like Gwen Stefani has now, but it backfired big time. R17.

She was never known for her looks but seemed like she could play the average, almost pretty American woman. Now she’s unrelatable and distracting. Laura Dern was someone I put in same category who now has wrinkles and looks natural. Her career has never been better.

Yes, I agree about the Laura Dern comparison. Laura still looks great...and natural.

R10 Not very strong performance. Good series, especially that gay couple’s storyline. But she gave average performance. And looked odd and emotionless.

She is classically trained!

Young Helen Hunt takes crank, sees a vision of her 2020 face:

That movie in OP's link is available on Amazon Prime. Is it me or does her mouth look smaller?

smoker's lines

Her mouth now resembles Beaker from the Muppets, only way smaller.

Heard something re: her and Reiser going the dreaded reboot route?

It's shady that they chose that for the thumbnail.

That's already happened, R29. I think the show is on Netflix.

She's always had a sour bitch face but the years have made her look even more sour now.

Thanks, R31. How bad WAS it?

R3, exactly what came to mind when I saw her. WTF did she do?

Whenever she talks, she sounds like she's drunk.

She was never a beauty.

I didn't watch it. Her face was too distracting in the trailers for it.

She got the face she deserves?

I feel sorry for her--she should have had a longer career than she did, but the bad plastic surgery really has held her back.

R35 She does sound drunk. That's what I meant when I said she seems like a mild stroke victim. Her tongue seems thick in her mouth when she talks.

Won't you bitches feel ashamed if it turns out she IS a stroke victim??

Yes, the MAY reboot already happened and the world didn't even bother to yawn or shrug its shoulders.

As far as I know, you have to be a customer of Spectrum (formerly Time Warner) cable TV to access this tremendously important and breathlessly anticipated reboot to catch up on zzzzzzz

If you want to experience Peak Helen Hunt Cringe, watch her seduce Richard Gere in "Doctor T and the Women".

It's so so so so terrible and awkward and....really really hard to watch.

To R11 and anyone else who watched I See You. Did I miss the explanation of the kid being yanked off his bike in the beginning by what appeared to be supernatural forces? There was nothing supernatural about the killer pedophile.

Clearly lots of work done from her appearance in that trailer---she looks Joan Rivers-ish. Reiser looks like he's aged normally except for the bulging cheekbones.

Must you ask? Plastic Surgeons need to stop operating on these BPD Hollywood freaks. As long as the surgeons get paid they will keep messing these Hollywood whores faces up.

OP, is that picture from "Cats"? Was she IN "Cats"? And if not, why not?

In that screencap at r37, she looks like Fire Marshall Bill is wearing a fleshmask of Bo Derek's face.

Farrah's naughty romp in the fountain in 'Dr. T And The Women' was filmed right here at NorthPark Center in Dallas (just down from GAP!).

Twister, indeed.

What's her reputation like? Is she a nasty diva? Or is it just RBF? Is she kind, hardworking, generous?

Lesbian.

I’ve always liked her and, even if it’s an unpopular opinion, I enjoyed her performance in AGAIG and never minded her Oscar win. I remember everyone that year falling over themselves in agony because Judi Dench didn’t win that year for Mrs. Brown (a performance she would repeat on auto-pilot several times in the future). Hunt had great exasperated chemistry with Jack Nicholson in the film and I really believed the relationship between her and Greg Kinnear.

She does look rather hard in the face now though. I thought she still looked good in The Sessions, but that was eight years ago now.

She does appear in one of Woody Allen’s worst films, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion.

I’ve always kind of wanted her to play a really rough hooker at some point. Maybe now is the time?

R44 the kid was clotheslined.

good film. nice little twists, although you can see them coming.

poor Helen Hunt, though. she sounded and looked drugged. but then again, that may have been part of the dynamic between her and the serial killing husband.

and those saying she was "never cute" must all be gay men. she was very cute when young. then she grew up and played believable, normal women quite adequately.

we should encourage more "normal" looking actors. they are generally more about putting work into their craft, and being believable at the people they are playing. no one currently is a superhero, and most of us are not models. some of us want to see something approaching real life on the screen.

Please, if you want to discuss the film make a thread about it instead of posting spoilers here. I haven't seen it yet, but plan to.

Sorry about that, R55. There are still a bunch of twists and turns along the way though.

She's always been a gaunt, dyed-blonde which I guess is "normal looking" for Hollywood.

For "real world normal looking" refer to someone like Kathy Bates.

R57 Funny you should mention Kathy Bates. I remember read some time ago that James L. Brooks originally wanted Kathy Bates for the Helen Hunt role in that movie. He wanted someone "real" and believable as a working class waitress struggling to care for her son.

But apparently, the studio wanted someone younger and hotter - hotter as in someone everyone was talking about at the time, and that was Helen Hunt. She was riding high with Mad About You and was very in demand at the time. So she ended up getting the part.

I sent her to my guy, Dr. Zhivago

I really cannot imagine Kathy Bates in the Helen Hunt role at that point in her career. That would have been the year she was in Titanic. I love Bates, but I just don’t see it.

Thinking more about it, it could have been a great comeback role for Debra Winger. She was always able to play working class believably enough. And it would have been interesting to see her reunited with Jack Nicholson in a different dynamic.

As Good As It Gets also contains the last good performance of Cuba Gooding, Jr.

R60 Debra Winger could have definitely played that part.

I love all the Kathy Bates comments towards the 50 mark in this thread. She definitely looks like a 'real' woman and is aging very well. She's still a chunk but a beautiful chunk. She reminds me of my mom and my favorite sister.

^^^after the 50 mark

Kathy Bates even looked beautiful in Richard Jewell. I was excited when she received a surprise Oscar nomination for it this year.

Love Kathy.

Shut up about Kathy Bates! This is MY thread, bitches.

Sorry, OP. Didn't mean to hijack the thread. I've had that happen to me in the past, very frustrating! I'll start one on Kathy.

Here's everything I know about Helen: She started very young - I remember a movie where she was a high school quarterback. She was married to Hank Azaria and then Chuck Paluahniuk (Fight Club) and moved to Hawaii. And now this thread.

That's what I remember so now you don't have to Google anything.

She started out before then R68.

Coming Soon in "My Life with Billy Jack: The Delores Taylor Story".

Hunt supposedly divorced Azaria after she walked in on him being sucked off by Richard Kind.

Can you blame him R71?

Actresses should never get more than Botox.

Is she a hermaphrodite like Jaime lee curtis?

R53 well, she came close to playing a hooker when she played a sex therapist. The Sessions was a real life story made into a film. both parties to the events had written about them previously, or spoken about them publicly.

She needs to let the botox wear off some so she can move her forehead again and then she should reinvent herself as the villain. Her girl next door days are over. Same goes for Meg Ryan.

Why did Helen Hunt's face go straight down the shitter?

I watched the movie last night. Will have to rewatch it as I had a few too many halfway through. I didn't watch her TV, but obviously knew who she was and what she looked like. If we haven't seen someone for a long time their aging can be jarring to us.

R76 They would both be terrifying villains now.

Her face makes me think she must have a headache 24/7. So maybe that’s why she’s such a cunt.

Remember when she was in a movie stealing a man from Scarlett Johannson?

In I SEE YOU, which by the way is an excellent movie, she looks just dreadful. That half-moon mouth expression that made her look quirky in 90's romcoms now looks like hell. Every close-up of her in the movie is filtered to death where she looks like a wax figure that cannot move from :-(

One of Helen's earliest credits was as "Betsy" for three episodes on the 80s nighttime soap opera Knots Landing from 80-81

She was good friend's with Karen Mackenzie's (Michele Lee) annoying daughter, Diana Fairgate

Helen Hunt was a child actress. Her early credits included The Swiss Family Robinson TV show (1975), a guest spot on Family (1976), and the movie Rollercoaster (1977). She had 15 professional credits and had been in the business six years before she was on Knots Landing.

She was also Murray's daughter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

"She was married to Hank Azaria"

for 17 months

" and then Chuck Paluahniuk (Fight Club)"

For zero amount of time.

"Palahniuk came out as gay after an interview with Karen Valby, a reporter for Entertainment Weekly. Believing that he would be "outed" by Valby after confidentially referring to his male partner, he openly declared his homosexuality on his website.[46] According to an interview with The Advocate in May 2008, he and his unnamed male partner live in a former church compound outside Vancouver, Washington.[47][48] He and his partner have been together since the 1990s, having met while Palahniuk was working at Freightliner. He told one interviewer, "We both had these very blue-collar lives, and now our lives are completely different."[49][50]"

She pings huge. There were many rumors about her in the early 90's as well as Hank Azaria. She was best friends with Helen Slater and I seem to remember them denying the rumors that they were an item. Then she married a gay guy. Hmm.

How did she get so much work as a child actress when she didn’t really have the look that they want in child actresses (cute and all American and bubbly) nor particularly charming or talented?

It’s kind of refreshing to see a woman with no upper lip these days.

I heard she is mean and the mean came out on her face.

Are we sure she didn't have a mild stroke? One eyelid sags so much it's almost as though she has ptosis, and it doesn't make sense for her to have had all that Botox and new veneers, but not an eyelid reduction or lip injections.

She looks a little like Candace Bergen after the Murphy Brown-era facelift.

Vintage gossip: “ Hunt, Helen. "Cold as ice."Closeted L_____ or Bisexual. Notoriously cheap, and unpleasant to her staff. Linked with Gillian Anderson, Hank Azaria, Matthew Broderick, Melissa Etheridge, and Kevin Spacey.”

Her forehead is yuuuge and smooth and the rest of it is droopy and crabbed. She has an odd slurred way of speaking now, like Matthew Perry. I assumed it was poorly fitted dentures.

She looks unfortunate. Wow @ that shaggy skin

r91, age and gravity doesn't care about symmetry.

[quote]we should encourage more "normal" looking actors. they are generally more about putting work into their craft, and being believable at the people they are playing.

👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏

I will never forget back when some magazine would have an excellent report every year during the Oscar season- They would do a behind the scenes report of the prior year's awards- It was EXCELLENT. Was it Premiere Magazine? Movieline? One of those I think,,,

Anyway, this had to be the year after Helen won- as she was a presenter. So the report came out 2 years after she won-

She was a CUNT OF THE HIGHEST ORDER. Just a miserable and nasty bitch. They really nailed her.. It was quite a read.

I never forgot that great report.

....

There are reasons everyone refers to her as “Helen Cunt”. She got the face she deserved.

R88 She had the look that Hollywood loved in the 70s. That blonde tomboy look that Jodie Foster, Kim Richards, even Cynthia Nixon had. Kristy McNichol was the brunette version.

It might have been makeup, but watched Jodie Foster in Hotel Artemis and she looked older than her years.

Absolutely no idea why there is a picture of Leelee Sobieski in the Helen Hunt clip. ^^

R100- ( haven't seen it, but it could be the lighting too. Was it darkly lit? No beauty lighting then.

Yes R102 and her acting was terrible.

R103 Jodie's acting range is similar to Helen's. Helen is best playing morose, cold characters. Jodie is best when she plays nervous and twitchy. When they step outside those parameters, the results can be disastrous (e.g., "Somersby" and "Maverick").

She had a moderate facelift and a ton of fillers. Also got her eyes done. Looks a bit like Rocky from the Mask movie a bit for some reason. Maybe it will all settle more and dissolve.

Something changed from 51 years old to 52 years old. That's where I see the decline.

Yes; I think it was at 50 that the cosmetic procedures began.

[quote]What's her reputation like? Is she a nasty diva? Or is it just RBF? Is she kind, hardworking, generous?

I heard during her Mad About You days (around the time she did As Good As It Gets and her ego got bigger - I'd stopped watching the show by then) that she was a real bitch on set and so the writers made her character more of a bitch to be just like her so she'd take a hint and change her ways but it backfired because she was so clueless that she preferred the new "improved" character and was now a bitch both on and off camera.

I unexpectedly enjoyed that surfing movie she directed with Brenton Thwaites as her son but I've noticed that, other than Paul Reiser, nobody seems to work with her twice.

Then there was this incident last year.

R108 I wonder if she had an injury from that accident that required some kind of facial reconstruction. Or maybe she suffered some nerve damage which affected her face.

That just happened last October R109.

Why Helen? Fucking why???

I thought you were one of the smart ones.

Jesus fucking wept!!!

R110 Do we have pictures of her face prior to October to compare?

Was the top of her nose always like that? She looks like she has a genetic disorder that produces mild facial deformities.

No major injuries in the crash R112.

R114 Damn. She could've used the accident as an excuse.

She has that face from eating waaaaaaaaaay too much pussy.

R114 She needed maybe a tiny bit of filler on her upper lip. That's it. Maybe gain a few pounds and have the fat fill in her wrinkles.

Agree R117 her mouth needs help stat.

Some bitches don’t age well. Courtney Cox is another one. They don’t have the facial structure.

Courtney Cox would've been fine if she hadn't started hacking up her face Madonna-style.

She looks like a firecracker exploded in her mouth

Vincent...

[quote]Manville, who is in her early 60s, looked radiant,

Lesley Manville is one of the most brilliant actresses. Heartbreaking in "Another Year" terrifying in "Phantom Thread" and so warm in her sitcom "Mum".

Every time the ad for World on Fire appears on PBS I get the shivers when I see her face. I wonder if she was getting fillers injected in the nasolabial folds and the dr hit a nerve & caused paralysis.

Her face looks like it’s decomposing. Like she died but didn’t lie down. She could be on The Walking Dead as a leader of the deceased.

I cannot understand the praise for Mum. We get it. Life is awkward.

And what happened to the son’s gf? She looks totally different. She’s the same actress who has been playing her all along & was in George Gentley, but her face has changed.

Looks like there was a small fire at Madame Tussauds in Hollywood.

She looks like Caitlin

Karma

[quote] I cannot understand the praise for Mum. We get it. Life is awkward.

A woman is trying to put her life back together after her husband dies and all this shit is going on around her. It's sweet, albeit with an extremely annoying cast of supporting characters. Any other actress besides Lesley Manville would not have been able to make it work.

She did it to get the sequel to Pay It Forward. If you remember, Kevin Spacey's character in that movie had a slightly disfigured face which made him self-conscious. So now, Helen's character has wrecked her face to empower Kevin's character. I smell another Oscar for our Helen.

"I feel sorry for her--she should have had a longer career than she did, but the bad plastic surgery really has held her back"

This has to be a joke right? She had an insanely big career for an untalented, average looking actress with the charisma of a folding chair. Luckiest actress of her generation.

I have to agree with r131. Luckiest actress of her generation. I saw her do Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center and she was the weakest link of that show. Thank god we got to see Paul Rudd in a speedo or it would have been a waste. And they did broadcast that show on PBS, so I guess without her it wouldn't have been broadcast.

[quote] Any other actress besides Lesley Manville would not have been able to make it work.

She nods her head and says “oh” and “yes, dear.”

That’s it.

And critics swoon over the brilliance of the show & her stellar performance.

She looked good in Girls Just Want to Have Fun.

But then she was next to 🐎 face SJP

This show started last night on my pbs station & I don’t know if I can watch it. I don’t know what’s worse — Helen Hunt’s decayed mummy face or her “acting.” All she does is shout and walk out of every scene. She’s so horrible. She has some really good lines and she just rushes through them, yelling them out. Not the slightest nuance, no feeling except “angry American woman.”

And what show is that R135?

World on Fire, which is unfortunate because she looks like a burn victim

Thank you R137.

Helen is looking Susteren-esque these days.

How the hell do these freaks continue to get work? Looks are paramount as far as breaking into the industry, but once an actor is established it seems he/she can get as freaky-looking as he/she wants and continue working.

Gay subplot in World on Fire!

Why would anyone spit at armed Nazis who broke into their home after taking the city? In front of their daughter? So they can get executed in front of their child?

[quote] She had the look that Hollywood loved in the 70s. That blonde tomboy look that Jodie Foster, Kim Richards, even Cynthia Nixon had. Kristy McNichol was the brunette version.

Weird that 3 of the 4 mentioned are lesbians, and probably Helen too.

She obviously ate too many grapefruit.

OP you had me with downward gash...thanks for the laugh

Didn't she beard for Kevin Spacey? r28 the Beaker comparison made me laugh.

Lol so glad you enjoyed R145 and R146!!

She looks like she could be John Lithgow's underfed, angry older sister in OP's post. Minus the talent

She's one of his personalities in Raising Cain.

Or Michael Caine dressed as a woman in Dressed To Kill

The trailer made me want to watch the movie though.

She looks like the lipless dude who got eaten by wild pigs in that Hannibal movie.

R152- That's almost a compliment to that cunt's face!!!!!

R152 see R3

Just passed by Cast Away on cable and that seems to be the last time she had her old face

R137 - I thought the same thing about Helen in "World on Fire". Her alien looks make the show almost difficult to watch when she is in the scene.

I watched “I See You” this weekend — it was excellent! Some real surprises (in the script, not just how Helen Hunt and Jon Tenney look these days!). Very much worth a look.

These people gon learn about this plastic surgery. The only plastic surgery I'll ever recommend is truly big or weird honkers i.e. a nose jobs. Most beauty can be enhanced with diamond cream facials, nutrition, and exfoliating. Your fkin multimillionaire for gods sake there so much other alternatives, like makeup and lotion couture to enhance one's beauty. Why would you get a permanent physical alteration.

Hunt was never known for being a glamour girl, so it’s surprising to me that she decided to go under the knife.

It’s not shot close-up, but Hunt looks better here than she did in “I See You”. Maybe her face work has settled a bit? I THOUGHT maybe Jon Tenney (who I always thought was so handsome, even up to “Rabbit Hole”) was padded in “I See You”, but I guess not!

But the face belonged to a kooky ol' witch

Who had in mind the flute to snitch!

From her Vroom Broom in the skies,

She watched her plans materialize!

I enjoyed “I See You”. Hunt and Tenney were good.

The show “World on Fire” is unwatchable. It’s boring - how many times do we need to see Pole girl smooching up Germans so they can be shot? We get it. Helen Hunt’s face made my eyes squint in shocked horror & her monotone acting made my head hurt. We’ve seen the Lesley Mann/Sean Bean interactions enough, we get that, too. And the anachronisms - a pregnant single woman entertaining the troops 1) while pregnant & 2) loudly proclaiming she’s not married, wouldn’t happen.

It looks like it was filmed on a shoestring budget. Very tight shots of under lit interiors & rubble.

But people will watch anything, I guess. Even a face-scrambled Helen Hunt yelling her lines in a 1990s monotone.

You know, in this show, her left face profile looks like someone saw Penelope Keith once & tried to make a puppet version of her from flawed memory.

[R114] Yeah, if only that excuse could’ve helped Monty Clift’s career

^^ The quote was in reference to R115

^^^ Oh, dear, Wrong thread. So sorry.

I was watching PBS and they showed an experiment that was done comparing calories burned per day of Africans who walked everywhere & did physical work and sedentary office workers in the West. It was the same. They were shocked.

^^^^^

Wrong thread