Hunt: ‘I encounter the world with sharp teeth’

Oscar winner lets the tide take her in her new film

Helen Hunt wasn’t afraid to wear more than one hat on Ride, the new film that she directed, wrote and stars in. She was a little nervous, however, about the ocean — not getting in it, but using it as a star player.

“I can’t think of another independent movie that was filmed so much in the ocean,” Hunt says of Ride. “A member of our crew, he kept saying, ‘Nature dictates.’ We’d have a plan, now let’s see what happens.”

Letting the tide take you where it will, so to speak, is the key theme to Ride, a sort of coming-of-age tale whose central character — a middleaged, neurotic, tightly wound New York writer played by Hunt — has already come of age, in the traditional sense. But once her son moves out, drops out of school and heads to California to surf, Hunt’s character goes on a personal journey that involves more giving in and letting go than growing up (and also surf lessons from Luke Wilson). It’s a lesson, Hunt says, from which she herself could benefit.

“I encounter the world with sharp teeth,” Hunt says. “(Learning to slow down) comes one day at a time with a lot of effort. It does not come naturally, being playful, being quiet, having fellowship with friends. Learning somehow how to be my best friend.”

Ride isn’t the Oscar winner’s first time directing — she went behind the lens for 2007’s Then She Found Me — but it is the first time her name appears on an original screenplay ( Then She Found Me was largely based on the 1990 novel of the same name by Elinor Lipman). For inspiration here, Hunt says she thought back to “a couple smart New York women” from her youth.” I grew up with them,” Hunt says, “and maybe the only thing they lacked was that other people didn’t see the world the way they did. It is possible that other people had a different way of looking at the world, and it hadn’t occurred to them.”

“It made me laugh to think of what would be the most foreign thing for them, and it would be standing barefoot in the ocean, surfing with Luke Wilson.”

At 51, Hunt is at something of a sweet spot in her career, retaining a healthy dose of optimism and enthusiasm while having been around long enough to have a clear idea of the types of projects she’s interested in. She mentions that 2012’s The Sessions was her last feature film role prior to Ride, saying it was a set of back-to-back gigs that, for her, were particularly fulfilling in their portrayals of women.

“I feel it here and there,” Hunt says to a question of whether or not she struggles as a woman in film. “But I didn’t feel it on these two movies. Everybody I worked with, I didn’t feel anything but totally supportive. I guess they were impressed that I was pretty tireless, in the water eight or nine hours a day with a soggy sandwich in between.”

Hunt’s daughter, Makena, was born in 2004 and she hopes that Ride’s key points about abdicating a bit of parental control will resonate clearly with parents whose children — like hers — are beginning to forge their own battles for independence. The best thing to do to win that battle, Hunt says, is to not fight, but rather, to play.

“Don’t allow yourself to slip into that polarity where the kid does all the playing and the parent does all the policing,” Hunt says. “Get out the crayons, climb a mountain, jump in the ocean. It’s important, at least it is for me.”

Although, she admits, we can’t all be so lucky to call in Luke Wilson for surf lessons.