This lovely woman has often been called “the poor man’s Helen Hunt”. Myself, I think Helen Hunt is actually the poor man’s Leelee Sobieski. Why?
What makes Leelee remarkable is that she quit acting at a relatively young age, choosing instead to live a normal life. Here are the reasons she gave:
“Actors end up going from one role to another with all this energy behind them, and you just become emptier and emptier and emptier — you end up having no real experiences,” she explained. “To cry, you end up drawing on the experiences of another character you played.
“I would cry every time I had to kiss somebody; I couldn’t stomach it. I would think ‘I like this person, so I don’t think they should pay me to kiss them,’ or ‘I don’t like this person, so I don’t want to kiss them. Why is my kiss for sale?’ It made me feel really cheap.
“It might have been acting, but it was as real for me as my first or third kiss, so it was confusing for me.”
Good for her.
I really enjoyed seeing her back when she was acting, and completely agree that Helen Hunt is the poor man’s Leelee.