ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You've got a 3 1/2-year-old kid. And your character, April, wants a baby. How closely does April's life line up with your life?
HELEN HUNT: I would say the core elemental things are the same, in my character and Colin Firth's character. In the movie, his character wants to sleep on his kid's floor, and work outside of his kid's school. I don't do those things, but I fantasize about them. I would be more relaxed if I could stare at [my daughter] all day. [Laughs] I used to say I wanted to be a kangaroo: I could put her in my pouch and then go work and whatever.
So we also haven't seen as much of you on screen because you wanted to spend time with your daughter?
It's been about finding my life at home so compelling that it takes a great story for me to say, ''I'm not going to be around this kid every day. I'm just not bored of being with her.'' So if I read a movie that's pretty good, that in my 20s I would've said, ''Yeah, I'll jump on a plane and go to Utah for three months,'' it's just not the same now. One quality I envy in other actresses is their ability to just put their kids on a plane and move and be fine.
So now that this movie is finished, since it sounds so personal for you, does it mark the end of a certain part of your life?
Maybe. When I thought about what to write next, I said to myself that I've put everything I think into this movie. I don't care about anything else. It's all in here.
Were there movies you looked to for inspiration?
Kramer vs. Kramer. That's a perfect movie. I don't think this is a perfect movie, but there's something about the purity of how it was shot, the lack of pretension. I guess if [my movie] has a style it would be a lack of pretension, and you hope it just registers on someone's radar. I love About A Boy. That's a comedy where you find the mother in her own vomit after trying to kill herself, and this is a comedy where some dark things happen. Those are my favorite kind of movies.
Do you have an acting job lined up?
There's one thing that still needs to be financed, but I don't have a next big thing.
You want to direct again?
I hope so.
Have you always wanted to get behind the camera?
I think I have more of a director's brain than an actor's brain, in a way. I love acting, and I'd love the next thing I do to be someone else handing me a wonderful, luscious part. But I feel like my personality is kind of suited to this job.
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