Linda Hunt

About Linda Hunt

Linda Hunt (born April 2, 1945) is an American film, stage and television actress. She is perhaps best known for her Academy Award-winning role in 1982's The Year of Living Dangerously.

Hunt was born in Morristown, New Jersey, the daughter of Elsie (née Doying), a piano teacher who taught at the Westport School of Music and accompanied the Saugatuck Congregational Church choir, and Raymond Davy Hunt, the long-time vice president of Harper Fuel Oil in Long Island. She has a sister, Marcia. She was also born with Turner syndrome, a genetic condition characterized by partial or total absence of the second sex chromosome.

Hunt's film debut occurred in 1980 in Robert Altman's musical comedy Popeye. Two years later she co-starred as Billy Kwan in The Year of Living Dangerously, Peter Weir's film adaptation of the novel of the same name. For her role as a male Chinese-Australian photographer Hunt won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1983, becoming the first actor to win an Oscar for playing a character of the opposite sex.