Helen Hunt arrives at the 2012 Governors Awards on Dec. 1.(Photo: KRISTA KENNELL AFP/Getty Images)
1:15PM EST December 13. 2012 – For Helen Hunt, the role of a sex surrogate aiding a man stuck in an iron lung “happens once a decade.”
The attention The Sessions has received has taken her aback. “It’s such a tiny movie about a guy in an iron lung losing his virginity. What?” she says with a laugh by phone this morning, after learning of her Golden Globes nomination for best supporting actress. “It’s not like that tried-and-true old thing. We thought it might work, it might not work. We knew we cared about it. Beyond that, I don’t think there was any way to imagine it would have gotten this kind of attention.”
Hunt says when she first read the script for The Sessions, “I just thought the writing was beautiful. And the story was so unique. And I’d never seen this character before. Those are all things that just don’t happen, they just rarely happen. They happen once a decade.”
Hawkes, too, walked away with a Globe nomination for best actor this morning (both were also nominated for SAG awards this week). “We didn’t know each other” before filming,” says Hunt. “We barely know each other now. I think we had instant mutual trust and respect. … We talked very little about it, we planned very little. It was scary and it was supposed to be scary. It was intimate and it was supposed to be intimate. We were strangers and we were supposed to be strangers.”
How will she celebrate today? “It’s very glamorous,” she jokes. “I dropped my daughter off at school. I’m going to yoga. I might have lunch with a friend and have a glass of wine and say hooray. That might be unusual. But you know, kind of living life as usual. But I’m happy, I’m really happy.”
