Which is Holly Hunter's best film performance?

The Piano is a great film for insomniacs.

She elevates every film I've seen her in.

I love Broadcast News. Unlike so many other films, they made her a likeable main character who still has big (and realistic) flaws as a person.

Living Out Loud.

Living Out Loud should definitely be a choice. It's her finest and most under-appreciated work.

I'm quite partial to Miss Firecracker and The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom.

But another vote for Living Out Loud. I don't remember much about it but the scene where she goes to dinner with a book had a profound effect on me. As did the massage scene with Eddie Cibrian.

The one where she has a hick accent

As I've said before, not that I paid a lot of attention to her from one film to the next but it just shocked me how one minute she seemed to be this Oscar-winning, A-list movie star and then, two seconds later, the announcement came that she was going to be starring in a TV series. I was like, WTF??? What happened? Again, maybe she had been heading that way for a while and I just hadn't noticed but it all just seemed so out of nowhere.

Silence of the Lambs

Broadcast News casting is interesting. I saw James L. Brooks talk about it at a screening. He wrote it for Debra Winger and then she got pregnant and dropped out. He auditioned every actress around he said and no one lived up to the image he had of what Winger would have done with the role.

He was about to settle on one woman (he didn't say who, DL told me it was Catherine O'Hara interestingly if true) but he wasn't really enthusiastic about it. Someone said see Raising Arizona and he then met and immediately signed Hunter.

Interesting that she spoke with her own accent in the film. (and most of her films.)

I love that she and Fran McDormand were roommates in New York.

Another for Broadcast News. She's so perfect in it. You can totally see why both William Hurt and Albert Brooks are infatuated with her, and she has great chemistry with both.

R11 Château Refoulée Lesbienne

OP doesn't know shit about Holly Hunter!

This is her best: The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom.

R14, OP only listed her best known and Oscar-nominated and most-discussed performances. You're the one who doesn't no shit.

Miss Firecracker

[quote]You're the one who doesn't no shit.

Oh, dear!

She fucking won an Emmy from this TV film which you don't know shit about and I'm enlightening you about it.

[quote]Primetime Emmy [Winner] - Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Special - Holly Hunter

R17, you tired hag, this is a poll of her non-boob tube films. You should really get out to the movie theater once in a while.

When I was in high school, I went to see The Firm, expecting a big, Hollywood Tom Cruise movie. While I got that, I was also exposed to Holly Hunter for the first time. She blew away my young gay ass!

It might not be her most heralded performance, but it was the one that made me a fan. So, The Firm.

R4 is correct. End of thread

Her character in The Firm is so campy. I wonder if drag queens ever do her.

I didn't like some of her scenes in [italic]the Firm[/italic], but I love the one at the end when she's flirting with David Strathairn.

Living Out Loud is her best and a gay cult film.

I first noticed Hunter in Swing Shift. She has a really strong scene in which she cries because (I think) she's learned her husband has died. She really pops and outshines Goldie Hawn, Christine Lahti, and even Belinda Carlisle in the film.

Hunter was terrific in The Firm, so good she was nominated for Supporting, the same year she won Lead for The Piano. She and Gary Busey had great chemistry in that movie.

How embarrassing for you r14.

It specifically says film performances

I also liked her in ‘Always.’

She and Sissy Spacek are the two actress who - for whatever reason - never had to get rid of their thick Southern accents, and use it for every character they’ve played whether Southern or not (except the Piano duh)

Anyway, Broadcast News. She was perfect in it for all the reasons said. Albert Brooks was even better.

I'm giving it to The Piano, simply because the character is so different from anything else she had done and she was a completely unexpected choice for it. It just feels like a film that was more dependent on her executing her role perfectly than Broadcast News was--although she was perfect there too.