Hunter was born in Conyers, Georgia, the daughter of Marguerite "Dee Dee" (née Catledge),[2] a homemaker, and Charles Edwin Hunter, a part-time sporting goods company representative and farmer with a 250-acre farm. She is the youngest of six children. Her parents encouraged her talent at an early age, and her first acting part was as Helen Keller in a fifth-grade play. She is unable to hear with her left ear due to a childhood case of the mumps. The condition sometimes leads to complications at work, and some movie scenes have to be altered from the script for her to use her right ear.[3] She is irreligious.[4][5] She began acting at Rockdale County High School in the early 1970s, performing in local productions of Oklahoma!, Man of La Mancha, and Fiddler on the Roof.[6] Hunter earned a degree in drama from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and for a while performed in local theater, playing ingenue roles at City Theater, then named the City Players.[7]
Career
Hunter at the 1989 Emmy Awards
Hunter moved to New York City and roomed with fellow actress Frances McDormand, living in the Bronx "at the end of the D (subway) train, just off 205th Street, on Bainbridge Avenue and Hull Avenue".[8] A chance encounter with playwright Beth Henley, when the two were trapped alone in an elevator, led to Hunter's being cast in Henley's plays Crimes of the Heart (succeeding Mary Beth Hurt on Broadway), and Off-Broadway's The Miss Firecracker Contest. "It was like the beginning of 1982. It was on 49th Street between Broadway and Eighth [Avenue] ... on the south side of the street," Hunter recalled in an interview. "[We were trapped] 10 minutes; not long. We actually had a nice conversation. It was just the two of us."[8]
Hunter made her film debut in the 1981 slasher movie The Burning.[9] After moving to Los Angeles in 1982, Hunter appeared in TV movies before being cast in a supporting role in 1984's Swing Shift. That year, she had her first collaboration with the writing-directing-producing team of brothers Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, in Blood Simple, making an uncredited appearance as a voice on an answering-machine recording. More film and television work followed until 1987, when she earned a starring role in the Coens' Raising Arizona and was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in Broadcast News, after which Hunter became a critically acclaimed star.
In 2003, Hunter had the role of a mother named Melanie Freeland, whose daughter is troubled and going through the perils of being a teenager in the film Thirteen. The film was critically acclaimed along with Hunter and her co-stars and earned her nominations for the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 2004, Hunter starred alongside Brittany Murphy in the romantic satire Little Black Book, and provided the voice for Helen Parr (also known as Elastigirl) in the animated superhero film, The Incredibles. She reprised the role in the Disney Infinity video game series, and in the film's long-awaited sequel Incredibles 2 in 2018. She also voiced Chicken Little during the early production of the 2005 film Chicken Little until the character's gender was changed and was replaced by Zach Braff.
In 2023, Hunter was cast in Hurricanna alongside Sylvia Hoeks. It is a dramatization of the final days of Playboy model and reality TV actress Anna Nicole Smith. Hunter portrays Smith's therapist. Production took place in late 2023.[14]
She has been in a relationship with British actor Gordon MacDonald since 2001. The couple met in San Jose Repertory Theatre's production of playwright Marina Carr's By the Bog of Cats, in which she played a woman abandoned by her lover of 14 years, played by MacDonald. In January 2006, Hunter gave birth to the couple's twin sons[16][17][18] Claude and Press.[citation needed]
^Schlöndorff, Volker: "A Gathering of Old Men", Extras on German DVD by Arthaus
^Mackenzie, Suzie (November 22, 2003). "What people don't know about Holly". The Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited. Retrieved November 26, 2015.
^Conner, Lynne (2007). Pittsburgh in Stages: Two Hundred Years of Theater. University of Pittsburgh Press. pg. 247. ISBN978-0-8229-4330-3. Retrieved July 15, 2011.
