Performing on TV shows since she was a child, Helen Hunt grew up on the screen with millions of fans watching her transform from the fresh-faced girl to the now accomplished 59-year-old, whose years show on her face, adding to her natural beauty.

Hunt started acting when she was only 11. She got her big break in The Swiss Family Robinson, a TV series (1975 to 1976) about a shipwrecked family stranded on a volcanic island. Starring as Helga Wagner, she played a young girl from the same shipwreck, who was taken in by the Robinsons.

She later appeared as the daughter of Murray Slaughter (played by Gavin McLeod) on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, in an episode of The Bionic Woman opposite Lindsay Wagner, and in Facts of Life. Her first big movie was Rollercoaster (1977) alongside Hollywood legends, Henry Fonda and George Segal.

The next decade catapulted her into stardom with roles in touchstone 80’s films, like Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985), with another up and comer Sarah Jessica Parker, Project X (1987) with Matthew Broderick, and Next of Kin (1989) with the late Patrick Swayze and Ben Stiller in one of his earlier roles.

In the 1990’s, Hunt was a household name with her breakout TV performance in the hit comedy series Mad About You, where she starred opposite Paul Reiser, who later starred in the Netflix series, Stranger Things.

She won four back-to-back Emmy Awards and three Golden Globes for her comedic portrayal of one half of a newlywed couple. She also directed some episodes, including the series finale in 1999.

Speaking with People, Hunt shared about her daughter and Reiser, “… My daughter loves Stranger Things so now when he calls she’s excited. She’s never seen an episode of Mad About You but she’s super psyched about Stranger Things!” Hunt has one daughter, born in 2004, with Matthew Carnahan, her partner of 16 years.

Hunt is also known for playing a storm chaser in the adrenaline-fueled movie Twister (1996), her Academy Award-winning role in 1997’s As Good as it Gets, starring next to Hollywood royalty, Jack Nicholson, and 2000’s Cast Away and What Women Want.

More recently, she plays a journalist in BBC’s World on Fire and has a recurring character on Blindspotting. She’s also loaned her skills as a director to shows like Californication, House of Lies and This is Us.

Helen Hunt attends the 2021 Gotham Awards Presented By The Gotham Film & Media Institute on November 29, 2021 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Gotham Film & Media Institute)

In 2021, she revealed she was working on a Twister reboot with a diverse cast of storm chasers “from HBCU [historically Black college and university],” but the story was rejected.

“I tried to get it made,” Hunt said in 2021. “I was going to direct it… We could barely get a meeting, and this is in June of 2020 when it was all about diversity. It would have been so cool.”

Universal Pictures is releasing Twisters, without Hunt, in July 2024.

Over the years, Hunt, who’s collected numerous awards and nominations, has been a staple in Hollywood culture with her timeless performances and beauty.

As one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood–a face that through the years has matured, she’s recently been the topic of many conversations.

With a career spanning more than four decades, it’s common, and expected, that there would be natural physical changes but, as a celebrity, Hunt is not immune from unfiltered opinions coming from the public.

Speculation that she had plastic surgery started after an accident in 2019, where the SUV she was a passenger, was t-boned by another car, causing it to rollover. She was briefly hospitalized but fully recovered, and within one week, she was back to work filming the limited series reboot of Mad About You.

Speaking with People about reprising her role, Hunt said, “It was a very loving piece of work. We loved it. It would be fun to work on something that’s really about love. We’ll be older though — I hope people are prepared for that. I’m not prepared for it!”

Shortly after, Radar Online, posted an article suggesting the star too much plastic surgery. In the story, she’s referred to as “ageless,” followed by “mannequin-like” and “…her expression more static than usual.”

Fans however were quick to defend her. One wrote, “I’m not an expert on spotting facelifts and that but to me Helen Hunt today still looks like Helen Hunt from Mad About You, just older. Which is what happens when 3 decades pass, people get older.” Another wrote, “I think we are so used to seeing women who have puffed up their lips and lifted both eyes and forehead, that a woman who is aging normally looks odd to us.”

Tight-lipped about the rumours that she’s had a nip and tuck to smooth the wrinkles on her face, it’s possible that Hunt benefits from a makeup artist, who can achieve the same results with some magical strokes of their brush.

In fact, there are many Hollywood beauty secrets that keep celebrities looking ageless. Pairing a healthy diet and exercise with pricey non-surgical spa treatments have proven results!

Hunt is very active and isn’t shy about showing off her fit physique. In an interview, she explained “As a general rule, I tend to move. I don’t go to a gym ever. I don’t diet ever. I used to diet, but sometime after the eighties, it made me miserable, but I do like to walk, run, and I do like to surf when I can just to warm it up, and I do enjoy doing yoga when I can get there.”

As we all know, being a woman in Hollywood can be quite a challenge.

In a 2019 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Hunt discussed how she has experienced being objectified throughout her career and how she hopes to help create a more inclusive.

“What are the great movies for younger women where they’re the protagonist [being] made now? You know what I mean? The whole thing — there’s no equal rights amendment. We’re fucked,” Hunt told Huffington Post in 2015.

Over the years, Hunt has been involved in various advocacy and philanthropic efforts to support women’s rights and empowerment – speaking up against objectification of women.

”I certainly drive around and I’m tired of the billboard where she’s barely in her underwear and they’re selling, you know, a watch or something,” Hunt said.

”I’m over it, to be honest.”