Early life

Hunt was born in Morristown, New Jersey, and raised in Westport, Connecticut. She is one of the two daughters of Raymond Davy Hunter, vice president of Harper Fuel Oil on Long Island, and Elsie Doying Hunter, a piano teacher who taught at the Westport School of Music and accompanied the Saugatuck Congregational Church choir. Hunt attended the Interlochen Arts Academy and the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago (now part of DePaul University).

Career

Film

Hunt's film debut in 1980 was in Robert Altman's musical comedy Popeye. Two years later, she co-starred as Billy Kwan in The Year of Living Dangerously, Peter Weir's film adaptation of the novel of the same name. For her role as the male Chinese-Australian photographer Billy Kwan, Hunt won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1983, becoming the first person to win an Oscar for playing a character of the opposite sex. In addition, the character was Asian and had the condition of dwarfism. In her screen test, Hunt wore a hairpiece, a fake moustache, and "paste-on pieces above her eyes to Oriental". To accomplish the role during production, Hunt shortened "her hair and dye it black wore padding around her waist, shaved her eyebrows, and carried something in her shirt pocket." In her 1986 interview with the Bomb magazine, Hunt remarked that Billy Kwan "is supra-personal layers of sexual ambiguity"

Hunt also played a nurse in She-Devil (1989) and the austere school principal opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop in 1990. Hunt played the assassin Ilsa Grunt in If Looks Could Kill (1991) opposite Richard Grieco and Roger Rees.

Theatre

Also a well-known stage actress, Hunt has received two Obie Awards and a Tony Award nomination for her theatre work. She created the role of Aunt Dan in Wallace Shawn's play Aunt Dan and Lemon. She portrayed Sister Aloysius in the Pasadena Playhouse production of John Patrick Shanley's play Doubt. She was praised for her performance as the title character in Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children. Hunt also appeared as Pope Joan in Caryl Churchill's Top Girls when London's Royal Court Theatre's production was staged at the Public Theater in New York. In an interview with writer Craig Gholson and actor Vincent Caristi, Hunt discussed her experience acting in theatre, “Acting onstage is like an explosion each night. And what comes in at you all the time as you are trying to . . . create something which is a tremendous act of organization and concentration.”.

Television

Her television appearances include recurring roles as Judge Zoey Hiller on David E. Kelley's series The Practice and as Dr. Claire Bryson on Without a Trace. She has narrated several installments of The American Experience on PBS. She now plays the role of an operations manager and supervisor on the CBS fall show NCIS: Los Angeles with Chris O'Donnell, LL Cool J, Daniela Ruah, Eric Christian Olsen, and Barrett Foa.

Voice work

Hunt has a rich, resonant voice, which she has used in numerous documentaries, cartoons, and commercials. She is the on-air host for City Arts & Lectures, a radio program recorded by KQED public radio at the Nourse Theater in San Francisco, a program that presents interviews with celebrated writers, artists, and thinkers addressing contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Hunt was chosen by Walt Disney Feature Animation to lend her enigmatic speaking and singing voice to Grandmother Willow in the animated musical film Pocahontas and its direct-to-video sequel Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World.

Her voice work includes also the character of Management in Carnivàle, and the titan Gaia, who serves as the narrator in the God of War series of video games. She narrated the introductory film at the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, and has also been heard in various commercials of the late 1990s for Tylenol.

Hunt narrated the PBS Nature special entitled Christmas in Yellowstone. She also narrated the National Geographic documentary The Great Indian Railway.

Personal life

Hunt is 4 feet 9 inches (1.45 m) tall. In high school, she was diagnosed as having hypopituitary dwarfism. She does not have Turner syndrome as some blogs have stated.

Hunt is a lesbian, and since 1987 has lived in Los Angeles with her wife Karen Klein, whom she married in 2008. Hunt is an ambassador for the Best Friends Animal Society.

No connection exists between Hunt and two other famous women who share her SAG-registered last name, Oscar winner Helen Hunt and actress-director Bonnie Hunt. Bonnie has joked that people come up to her asking for autographs, mistaking her for Helen, and she then confuses them even more by signing as Linda.

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1980	Popeye	Mrs. Oxheart
1982	The Year of Living Dangerously	Billy Kwan	Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated—Australian Film Institute Jury Prize Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture Nominated—National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress
1984	Dune	Shadout Mapes
	The Bostonians	Dr. Prance
1985	Eleni	Katina
	Silverado	Stella
1987	Waiting for the Moon	Alice B. Toklas
1989	She-Devil	Hooper
1990	Kindergarten Cop	Miss Schlowski
	Carmilla	Narrator
1991	If Looks Could Kill	Ilsa Grunt
1992	Rain Without Thunder	Atwood Society Director
1993	Younger and Younger	Frances
	Twenty Bucks	Angeline
1994	Prêt-à-Porter	Regina Krumm	National Board of Review Award for Best Acting Ensemble
1995	Pocahontas	Grandmother Willow	voice
1997	The Relic	Dr. Ann Cuthbert
	Eat Your Heart Out	Kathryn
1998	Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World	Grandmother Willow	voice
2002	Dragonfly	Sister Madeline
2005	Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution'	Narrator	voice
	Yours, Mine and Ours	Mrs. Munion
	The Great Transatlantic Cable	Narrator
2006	Stranger Than Fiction	Dr. Mittag-Leffler
2007	The Singing Revolution	Narrator

Video games

• God of War as Narrator
• God of War II as Gaia/Narrator
• God of War: Chains of Olympus as Narrator
• God of War III as Pre-title screen credits Narrator
• God of War: Ghost of Sparta as Narrator
• God of War: Ascension as Narrator

Television credits

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1978	Fame	Mona
1987	Basements	Rose Hudd	Segment: "The Room" - director: Robert Altman
	The Room Upstairs	Mrs. Sanders	TV movie
1993	Space Rangers	Commander Chenault
1997-2002	The Practice	Judge Zoey Hiller	24 episodes
1998-2006	The American Experience	Narrator
2003-05	Carnivàle	Management—voice	9 episodes
2006	Nature	Narrator	Episode: "Christmas in Yellowstone"
2007	The Unit	Dr. Eudora Hobbs	2 episodes
2008	Without a Trace	Dr. Claire Bryson	3 episodes
2009-present	NCIS: Los Angeles	Henrietta "Hetty" Lange	Series regular Teen Choice Award for Choice TV Actress Action (2011, 2012)
2014	Scorpion		Episode: "True Colors"

Theatre

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1972	Hamlet	Player	Off-Broadway
1975	Ah, Wilderness!	Norah	Broadway
1983	Little Victories	N/A	Off-Broadway
	Top Girls	Pope Joan / Louise
1984	End of the World	Audrey Wood	Broadway
1985	Aunt Dan and Lemon	Aunt Dan	Off-Broadway

[ Source: Wikipedia ]