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Bonnie Hunt stays close to her roots both on and off screen

Published in The Dallas Morning News: 04.07.00

She's been called "the hands-down best [talk show] guest in America." But smart, funny Bonnie Hunt, 35, is much more than a gabfest mouth.

The Chicago native, who began her acting career while working as an oncology nurse and Second City comic, is a warm-hearted talent in touch with her roots.

Most filmmakers don't get a chance to go back and shoot in their old haunts. But Wes Anderson filmed "Rushmore" at his prep school in Houston and Peter and Bobby Farrelly returned to their Rhode Island stomping grounds for "There's Something About Mary."

For Return to Me the first-time film director went back to her old Windy City neighborhood.

Her romantic comedy, named for the Dean Martin song, stars David Duchovny of "The X-files" as an architect still grieving two years later for his dead wife (Joely Richardson) and Minnie Driver as a heart transplant patient eager for a second chance at life.

In the script she co-wrote with partner Don Lake, Ms. Hunt plays Ms. Driver's best friend, advising her not to shave her legs so she won't be tempted into sex – spoken like a real-life graduate of St. Ferdinand's elementary and Notre Dame High School.

As for acting in a film that she's also directing, the first woman to create, write, executive produce and star in her own TV series ("The Building") says, "It's one less person I had to discuss the scene with."

Her first movie role was as the waitress who spills toothpicks before a counting Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man." She shared billing with a Saint Bernard in "Beethoven," played Renee Zellweger's bitter older sister in "Jerry Maguire" and voiced Rosie the black widow spider in "A Bug's Life." While in preproduction for her own film, she starred as Tom Hanks' plain-talking wife in "The Green Mile."

In the city, where everybody seems to know her, doors opened for the homegirl. "Chicago to me is a giant Mayberry," she says. "I love that. I had it as a kid. People lived above their stores. They still do in some areas."

The malls have cut into those family-run stores, she says, but in Chicago that neighborhood feeling survives. "They're forced into it by the weather. Every year there's a huge snowstorm, and everybody's reminded they need each other. You've got to dig those cars out, and there's something bigger than us out there."

Reminders that they need each other give neighbors a sense of community, she says. "It's still alive in Chicago because it has to be," she says. "There's some kind of goodness in that which you're so nostalgic for. I know I am."

It's the fuzzy, uncynical feeling that informs her love story set in an Irish-Italian restaurant where Grace Briggs (Ms. Driver) waits on Bob Rueland (an endearing Mr. Duchovny) and his rude, noisy blind date.

"I told the studio, 'I'm going to write you a movie that you'll want to move into.' Because those are the movies that helped me get through my life. When I was a nerd and hanging out in the A/V room in high school and watching movies, I just got lost in them and they became my friends."

She is nothing if not loyal. Ten Second City actors are in "Return to Me." And when the network asked her to get rid of three actors on her acclaimed CBS series "The Building," she refused.

"They said, `We want to replace them because we have actors on hold to keep them off other shows that we're paying a lot of money to.' I said, `These people are my friends. I've known them 15 years – and you know what the executive said, `I could call them for you.'"

When the executives threatened to cancel the show if she didn't change actors, she said, "Let's just shake hands today and it's over.... I went home and told my husband we'd lost a ton of money and I'm not doing a show. But he always says, `Keep it small, enjoy it all.'"

It was, she says, the best thing she ever did, and tapes of "The Building" helped convince MGM to present "Return to Me."

But the story is old-fashioned schmaltz, and she worries about its reception. "I wonder if it's not cool to like it. Critics might think it's smart and it's funny, but maybe it's just too nice for them to like it. The trend has been mean, blunt, angry humor. It's so easy to write obnoxious characters and be funny. This was much more of a challenge creatively."

Before she moved to L.A. to start up a Second City off-shoot, Ms. Hunt juggled a career nursing cancer patients with working as a comic.

"I was always doing both. It was a great outlet. To me it was my energy, my fuel. The patients got so involved in it. I was working at this place across from Wrigley Field called Bob's Bar [where she founded the improvisational group, An Impulsive Thing] and you'd know my tables because there were all these bald people with bandanas on, god love 'em, drinking their water because they couldn't have alcohol...."

Besides, she says, "It gave us something else to talk about besides the dreaded cancer. People don't want to be identified by their disease. That's how I felt about the character Minnie Driver plays in this movie. That's why I had her say, `I don't want somebody to know [about her organ transplant] because they'll think I'm broken.'"

While nursing, she used to bring the whole Second City cast to Northwestern University Hospital. "We'd do the show and bring the beds into the hall. I'm really very, very lucky because my dad wanted me to be a nurse. I loved being a nurse, but I was only in nursing school a couple months when he died."

Seeing life and death up close has ordered her priorities, she says. It makes the ups and downs of show biz more bearable.

"I'm lucky because I was a nurse first. I forget 'em like we all do, but in those moments when I need 'em, they come in very handy."