Holly Hunter is a blonde in Living Out Loud -- but no airhead. Instead, she is intelligent, sensual and tart-tongued.

The platinum hair colour was simply an acting choice for the meticulous Hunter, who is being touted as a possible Oscar nominee for her work in this new romantic drama.

Living Out Loud, which opens tomorrow, stars Hunter as a woman who is jilted by her philandering husband in the opening scenes. She spends the rest of the film putting her life back together again with the help of Queen Latifah, playing a blues singer, and Danny DeVito, as an elevator operator.

"I really wanted a sense of light in her," Hunter muses in a recent interview, picking up on the hair colour.

"I wanted her to be a light. I didn't want her to be a victim. And I also didn't think she was a dark woman (in mood). I felt that she was a very bright light who was determined to enter the dark and find out about her life."

Nothing is casual or throwaway in Holly Hunter's life and career. Her look is always calculated or predetermined by her roles. On interview day, her hair is dyed a rich merlot wine colour and cut severely. It's for another movie, of course.

So it's amusing that Hunter claims ignorance when I try to discuss the unusual visual palette director Richard LaGravenese employed in Living Out Loud. There is a surreal, theatrical quality to the whole film and individual fantasy sequences.

"It doesn't concern me," Hunter shrugs. "It seriously is not my concern. It is out of my jurisdiction. I am not an actor who pays attention to that.

"What I am there to do is to take care of, protect and encourage the character I play. And that's my concern. I don't have any others. I really try to keep my nose clean in that way."

Hunter's husband, Janusz Kaminski, is perched nearby. Dressed in a radical chic black suit, Kaminski grins slyly as his wife disclaims any self-awareness of the look of her films.

She chuckles when she notices, finally introducing him as "a man who seriously knows about visuals."

No kidding. Kaminski is the Oscar-winning cinematographer who shot both Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan for Steven Spielberg. Together for five years, yet apart for much of their marriage because of separate work commitments, Hunter says she and Kaminski work hard at being together as much as possible. Without losing the opportunity to work on quality films.

"Great work is not easy to find -- not ever, not ever!" Hunter exclaims.

When something as interesting as Living Out Loud comes along, she grabs it, like the opportunistic girl who learns Rumpelstiltskin's secret in the fairy tale and makes the most of it. "It was a bit of spun gold for me."

The rest of the time, Hunter searches for the next glimmer of gold or learns to do with less than the young spitfire version of her might have expected when she was rising to stardom in films such as Broadcast News, The Firm and The Piano.

"It's difficult to do a fantastic movie every time. So you might settle to do a good one, or maybe a good character, or maybe with a good director. You have to break it down sometimes and accept compromises. We all get older and we learn things. You learn what is valuable and that life is not black and white.

"I think that's a realistic and hopeful way to live. Otherwise, you're this person who is living in some kind of dream state and you're going to be disappointed at every turn."

Like some airhead Hollywood blondes we know.


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