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Holly Hunter

Actor, Academy Award for The Piano

Born 1958

Photo: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America · CC BY-SA 2.0

Holly Hunter won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Piano, playing a mute woman without speaking a line of dialogue on screen. She has worked steadily across independent film, comedy and television for four decades.

Key achievements

  • Academy Award for Best Actress, The Piano, 1994
  • Two Emmy Awards and a Cannes best actress prize

Universities

  • Carnegie Mellon UniversityGraduate1976–1980

    Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

    Took a degree in drama in 1980 from the university's School of Drama, the oldest in the United States.

Facts

  • She learned to play the piano to concert standard for the role rather than use a double.
  • The Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, founded in 1914, was the first degree-granting drama programme in the United States.
  • She was nominated for two Academy Awards in the same year, for lead and supporting roles in different films.

Photographs

Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.

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