Commencement Address
1996
I’m so grateful to have been invited to speak to you today. I have this year witnessed a birth, a death, a marriage and now this. I have felt during each of these events, honored to be a witness at such a profound rite of passage. I’m equally honored to be here today.
When Jenny first asked me to speak to you, I was flooded with feelings of inadequacy, ‘What could I possibly say that would help, or mean anything to a room full of people on such an important day?’ Then she reminded me that Alverno High is an all-woman’s school and that I’d be addressing a group of young women only. Ooo, I thought, I do have something to say to them. I know very little about what it means to be a man, or what makes men tick, and since some of my favorite people are men, I’m making it my business to try and find out. But women, I know from. Now I’m not much of an advice giver. I subscribe more to the twelve step program ‘attraction rather than promotion’ way of passing on what I know. But because I want to rise to the occasion as your ‘Commencement Speaker’ I’ll do my best. I have, however, so few pieces of actual advice, that before each one I’m going to announce it loud and clear so nobody misses it.
From what I understand, we have among our graduates, future lawyers, actors, singers, painters, set and graphic designers, psychologists, doctors, and politicians. Not to mention, I imagine, future mothers and grandmothers. But what you all - we all - have in common is our womanhood. Through that you will make - are making - your place in the world, and it is to that woman in each of you I speak.
Archeologists in the last twenty years have discovered ruins, artifacts that point to a time when societies were matriarchal… that is, not so much that they were ruled by women, although some were, but more that, unlike the patriarchal society we live in today, that gets its rules and ways of being in the world from a man’s nature, there were entire civilizations that were governed by the principle of the feminine.
Piece of advice number one: Learn what those are! Learn about a woman’s nature. It won’t be easy. Women’s contributions both historically and artistically have been under-represented to say the least, but if you look hard you’ll find it. Ask your mothers and your Grandmothers to tell you their stories. For those of you artists and writers, there is no richer place to paint and write from than your own feminine history.
Spend time with women. For thousands of years, women have sat in circles with other women and shared their experience or lack of experience with each other and been fortified by hearing each other’s stories and struggles. Do that. I do. Each week I sit with a group of women and read stories, myths and fairy tales that speak to what it’s like to be a woman. Stories that remind me that, unlike a man’s nature which is Solar, like the sun shining steadily all the time, women are lunar, our bodies and psyches follow the phases of the moon. We wax and wane, we open and contract, we are filled with contradictions - that’s who we are. And the more I own that truth, the more comfortable I am with my own dual, feminine nature, the more powerful I have become, personally and in business. And that brings me to - Piece of advice number two: You can be powerful in business in a way that is uniquely female.
Without even realizing it, I used to, as an artist, and a business woman, put my best ‘male’ foot forward. That is, try to lead always with my strengths, hide my weaknesses, or the fact that I was unsure or that I saw both sides of an issue. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat in a business meeting, me in a roomful of men, discussing artistic and financial realities where all of our egos and bank accounts were at stake, and I watch as our ‘maleness’ takes over. We all act as sure as we can, we all try to assert ourselves as experts, overflowing with confidence. And then occasionally, one of us, whichever man or woman happens to be the most in touch with his or her feminine power at the moment, will step forward and say, ‘You know what, I don’t get it’ or ‘I’m unsure now, you may be right’, or ‘I’m feeling insecure about my point of view’. And suddenly everyone relaxes, everyone fights less and listens more, and everyone is empowered, especially the brave soul who offered up his or her small, quiet truth.
Emerson in his essay on Self Reliance said: ‘In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our own spontaneous impression with good humored inflexibility… If we don’t, tomorrow a stranger will say precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another… A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within more than anything else in the world.’
Aha!: Piece of advice number three: Find time each day to quiet the mind. Every piece of literature, every novel, every story that touches me inevitably has the same message: trust yourself, ‘To Thine Own Self Be True’. But how do we know what’s true? How do we ‘detect and watch that gleam of light’ that Emerson speaks of if we can’t hear ourselves think, or give ourselves time each day to not think and simply be. I know I need to or I wouldn’t have a prayer of knowing what my truth was, much less how to put it forth in the world.
Piece of advice number four: Put it forth in the world. Your truth is all you have. My favorite poem was written by Rainer Rilke. In it he says:
I can’t make every minute holy.
I don’t want to stand before you like a thing,
shrewd and secretive.
I want my own will, and I want
simply to be with my will,
as it goes toward action,
and in the silent, sometimes hardly
moving times,
when something is coming near.
I want to be with those who know
secret things or else alone.
I want to unfold
I don’t want to be folded anywhere,
because where I am folded, there I am a lie.
So I say to you: Unfold! Be brave. Put your hips into it and speak your truth. Cut it with compassion and if you hurt someone, don’t underestimate the power of heartfelt apology. But every day is your own personal work of art, and if you let fear keep you folded and silent, then the devil has won and we all have lost.
The last piece of advice I have for you is something my oldest friend is always saying to me: ‘Life falls apart and it comes together, and it falls apart again and then it comes together again.’ I know in my life this is true. Things you count on let you down and the universe supports you in ways you never expected. I think the art of living for me has become to see this life - death - life cycle, not as some cosmic error but as God in Motion. God in Action.
My wish for you is that you stand on the shoulders of the women who’ve come before you, and with truth and love, clear a path for the women who come after you. And you accept my heartfelt thanks for inviting me to be part of this very special day. Thank you.
Testimony of Helen Hunt
Burbank City Council Chambers
September 19, 2002
I can only imagine. I can only imagine the impossible choices we, who voted you in, ask you to make.
With the ever diminishing resources you have and the tidal wave sized budget deficit we expect you to manage, there are mouths to feed, and buildings to build and roads to repair. There is safety and transportation to insure and crises to manage, and on and on and on.
So can I stand before you and soberly say that creating legislation that insures, and protecting funding for, arts programs in the schools is THAT important? Yes I can.
I was asked here today to grab your attention. My face and my accomplishments in the arts are the things that are meant to qualify me to speak to you about the importance of, rather beg you to be the guardians of funding for arts in our children’s schools.
But neither my work, nor my career choice, nor the fact that I taught acting to young Californians this year make me FEEL qualified.
In all honesty what makes me FEEL qualified is that I am a California kid. My mother went to Hollywood High; I went to Valley View Elementary, Junior High in North Hollywood and Studio City and High School in Burbank. So when I speak for kids in California, it’s personal.
What makes me feel qualified is that I was a child who was given the opportunity to paint pictures, sing songs, play instruments, move in dance classes, and say words written by playwrights who understood the world in ways I was decades away from being able to.
And the fact that as I moved through dark periods in my childhood, being able to express myself saved me. Truly saved me. I had dance teachers who gave me a place to feel joy and abandon, and art teachers who helped me express myself in ways words wouldn’t allow.
I had drama teachers show me ways to express the inexpressible and introduce me to plays that put the big bad world into context. So I knew that other people had walked through what I was walking through and survived, even thrived.
Think about how important that is now.
We are asking kids to grow up in overwhelming times. Without a place to express their frustration, without an introduction to the early dramatists that survived holy wars and terrorists of a different kind, without seeing that civilizations have thrived through tolerance and perished through prejudice and hatred, how will they possible make it?
Financially, here’s what I know: I have spoken to dozens and dozens of very conservative, very Western, very buttoned up physicians and can no longer find ANY who refute the fact that stress makes people sick. So although this kind of long-term thinking often doesn’t hold up in court and despite the fact that we’re IN court, you and I know it to be true. I know from personal experience that art can heal you. To keep our kids healthy, and to stop the unnecessary medical spending it takes to try to heal them when they’re not, we must give them a place to express themselves, to release the build up of stress and anxiety that comes from being small in a world that is much too big.
Secondly, the Arts and Entertainment Industry are the second largest business sector in California. Why not keep the creative work force and the money here in California?
People will speak later today about how offering inspired and carefully constructed arts programs in schools make for students who show up and when they do excel.
I taught acting to young Californians this year at the California State Summer School for the Arts.
I was asked two days ago why I did it. Why did I devote so many hours and so much energy to these kids?
The only thing I can say is that the healthy response of anyone who received is to give back. I received a comprehensive and consistent exposure to and education in the arts.
But I didn’t get it in school. There were arts programs offered, but they weren’t enough. They came and went. They weren’t required. You wouldn’t let a kid go three years without a math class. And in the same way we must offer up and in fact insist upon an ever-growing exposure to the arts. Like anything, courage, inspiration and will die if they’re neglected.
Art is often a difficult thing to define. And similarly, creating challenging, inspired programs may take a subtler set of minds and a little more time than scheduling next year’s algebra class. But so be it. The teachers and administrators who have to think out of the box to create these programs will benefit as well. I know there are tons of people in the entertainment industry who would love to offer their services up to help create these programs. But they need to see the opening, the invitation. One thing the schools can do, and that you can do, is support legislation that opens the opportunities for teachers in this area. Allow for the possibility that there may be different kinds of life and work experience that render someone qualified.
So I’m here to thank you, for offering yourself up for a life in public service, to thank you for being willing to tackle the seemingly ‘untackleable’. And I’m here to beg you, when there is legislation in front of you that makes our children’s right to express themselves, their right to access all that there is that will help them survive in a world that scares us all, that you take the hard stand and follow what we all know is true.
That strong, giving, powerful, constructive people are not born from math and English alone.
Just because it’s beautiful, doesn’t make it frivolous. We are kidding ourselves if we think that art programs in schools are a luxury, they are a necessity. It is our duty to stand as guardians of them. Thank you.
Oscar Acceptance Speech
1998
The first time I saw “Mrs. Brown” — I saw it three times — the first time, I leaned over to my beloved and said, “She’s going to win an Academy Award.” And in my mind tonight, she has. And so has Julie Christie and Helena Bonham Carter and so has Kate Winslet. For that matter, so has Billy Connelly and so has Joan Allen. I’m honored to work in a year when there were so many magnificent performances. I’m here for one reason and that’s Jim Brooks. One single reason, and that’s the only reason, really. That’s the only reason. I thank — I’m tired of thanking you. I thank god for giving me a little piece of you. Jack, I worship you, you know it. Greg, I hope you hold in your heart how beautiful your performance in this movie was. I’d like to thank our producers, everyone at Sony, the team of experts it took to make me available for this movie, my acting teachers, Lurene, Gordon Hunt, Gary Austin, for giving me to way to learn about myself. My parents who are sobbing at this point. My friends who are at home jumping up and down and you, the very — just very best man I know. Thank you so much. This is a magnificent honor. Thank you very much!
Emmy Acceptance Speech
1999
Goodness gracious–(Hunt gets cut off by cheers from audience, Hunt laughs). Um, ok thank you so much and thank you for the compliments and uh, uh, I’d like to thank my partner Connie Tavel for seeing my career through these seven years and my agent Bryan Lourd and Kevin Huvane and Steven Huvane for everything and, um, our cast and crew and, um, our wonderful directors, especially my father Gordon Hunt and Michael Lembeck who when I said, “Yeah, but I wanna direct,” said, “Alright, I’ll teach you how.” So thank you so much and um, just a family of people that made it the most, uh, creative kind of safe, loving place to work and uh, Vic Levin our magnificent writer and before him Larry Charles and before him Jeffery Lane and before him Danny Jacobson and um, Paul Reiser thanks for inviting me to be on a show with you and how will I ever find someone to act with who I trust and love so much and my beautiful husband. Thank you so very, very, very, very much.
