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HOLLYWOOD - There are enormous, career-threatening pressures that crash into an actor's life after an Oscar win.
But Holly Hunter figures she had it easier than most. That's because she earned her best actress trophy in the peerless Jane Campion drama The Piano. The give-us-more-of-the-same pressures were nonexistent, for a change.
"It seems that after almost every movie that one does," Hunter analyzes in her typical direct, blunt but charming manner, "if the movie gets a certain amount of notoriety or some kind of highish profile, people tend to either expect you or want you to do something similar afterwards.
"But for me to go in search of something similar to The Piano would be more than foolish. Foolish is kind of a foolish word for what I would have been. I wouldn't have worked for a decade or longer. Or I might have to get out of the profession. It's also a silly quest to NOT work for a very long time either, because it's good for actors to act."
So act she does. Hunter, although she flew to Los Angeles for these interviews, is currently back in Toronto shooting the dark thriller Crash with James Spader and Elias Koteas for Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg. Meanwhile, the cops 'n' killer thriller Copycat just opened this weekend, with Hunter playing a steely, highly professional San Francisco police detective tracking a serial killer. Although she describes the role as "the girl with a gun" and teases that the movie "does not have the stench of art," Hunter, with her co-star Sigourney Weaver, elevates the material beyond the usual standards of that genre.
On Friday, another Hunter movie opens. She stars in Jodie Foster's new directorial effort, the emotional, comedic drama Home For The Holidays. Hunter plays a woman who goes home to her chaotic family for the U.S. Thanksgiving Day weekend.
There is buzz about Home For The Holidays, talk that Hunter could garner another Oscar nomination. "Oh man!" Hunter exclaims when I mention it, "I have nothing to do with that stuff! That goes around without my permission." As much as she is known for drawing rigid boundaries between her public life and her private life - she'll mention only that she is now married to a cinematographer and curtly cuts short any other questions.
She would much rather discuss issues. Such as how deftly Home For The Holidays explores the homosexuality of one of its characters, the boy-man played by the explosive Robert Downey Jr. The parents played by Anne Brancroft and Charles Durning have a tough time with it.
"I think it's brave emotionally," Hunter says of the complex way the movie delves into the conflict. But she doesn't mean it politically. "I mean, can't we get beyond this crap. I wish it were no big deal for someone to be gay in a family. Politically, it's kind of like the abortion rights: Why can't we just move on to something more important?"
But the emotional bravery is bound up in Foster's direction. "Jodie had the patience and the stamina and the compassion to stay on that tough line that the movie walks."
Hunter walks her own tough line. She reflects again on winning an Oscar. "Of course, there's a lot of pressure heaped on somebody who goes to the Academy Awards and does well there. How you deal with that is the more interesting aspect."