Independent woman

Holly Hunter is the most famous small film actress in the world. This is not a reference to her height, though she is, undoubtedly, petite at 5ft 2in, even in the kitten heels she wore to the London premiere of her latest film,

To those we can now add Thirteen, a film with a minuscule budget, but a big heart. The truly remarkable thing about it is that Nikki Reed, who co-wrote (and acts in) the autobiographical story of one teenage girl falling under another's malign influence, was 13 when she took up her pen. Hunter plays the single mother who is powerless to quell a volcanic rebellion under her own roof that involves drugs, theft, sex and self-harm, plus industrial quantities of teenage rage. The scenes where her daughter Tracy, played by Evan Rachel Wood, opens her wrists with a razor are pretty much unwatchable.

And in her case, it's a gift.'

In terms of finance, the project was getting nowhere until the script found its way to Hunter. 'I just thought, "Wow! What is this girl?",' she says in her lispy Georgian drawl. 'What would compel her to write a screenplay that's coming to me as an offer? I was actually pretty startled by her ability to translate an experience on to the page.

Within 48 hours, Hunter had signed, but not before beefing up her character, Melanie. 'The thing that I wanted to have in focus more was the triangle: the strength of the conflict between this lost daughter, the girl who leads her astray and a mother who represents a salvation had to remain in play at all times.'

It is not often you hear of an actor influencing the script for artistic, rather than egotistical, reasons. But Hunter has an ear for dialogue. Just the one ear, mind - she lost use of the left one when she had mumps at nine, and focuses intensely when listening. Her fierce air of intelligence must explain why both Campion and James Brooks, director of Broadcast News, called off the hunt for tall actresses when they met Hunter. 'I have gotten several parts where they wanted somebody like Sigourney Weaver,' she has said. 'Then they got me.'

The intensity would be a little scary if unleavened by self-deprecation.

It is clear she has definite views on the films she doesn't want to make. 'Or they don't want me,' she interjects. 'That is a viable part of the equation. There may be movies that I would love to do and I don't have the box-office draw to merit being cast. Often people say, "Oh my God, you're full of integrity." Maybe I wanted to sell out, but they wouldn't let me.'

Don't you believe it. She loved making Thirteen so much that she was early on set. And, unlike most stars, she didn't have her own trailer. 'Yeah, that stuff is a little meaningless.' During rehearsals, Hunter, who has no children, spent a night on the set with her young co-stars. 'We ordered food in and dressed up and they threw make-up on me and we videotaped each other. I have no idea what happened to that tape.' It might fetch up on the net? 'Actually, it would be perfectly frolicky and lovely if it did.' Not that she has a computer to watch it on.

Hunter was the youngest of seven children growing up on a farm outside Atlanta. 'At 13 I probably wanted to be a pianist. Then I found acting.' She studied drama in Pittsburgh and made her way to New York. As her career in film took off she moved to the West Coast. Since separating in 2001 from her husband of six years, the cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, she has returned to New York.

That she's still at it at 45 is no doubt attributable to the fact she's never traded on being a frocksheathed celeb. 'I'm all for going to award shows. All that stuff is fabulous. I feel more comfortable with myself as the years go on. There is not a point in time where I say, "Those were the salad days." My path has been so non-linear that it's probably been easier for me to get older than for other people. And the fact that I can go between being a character actress and being a lead character has afforded me a certain kind of mobility.'

That mobility incorporates as many stage plays as it does films. Her most recent drama in New York was in Marina Carr's By The Bog Of Cats, a retelling of Medea, which she will revive in a new West End production next year. She was also a mystery guest in The Play What I Wrote during its stint on Broadway. She came straight on to the show from the set of Thirteen and admits it was unnerving playing herself after only two hours' rehearsal. 'I was sitting there thinking, "Who am I?" And the fact was, I was Holly Hunter, and it was the first time I had ever gone on stage and uttered my own name. That, alone, was very disturbing. The actors [Hamish McColl, Sean Foley and Toby Jones] were very creative with my name. They called me Holly Golightly. Did they call me Helen Hunt? No they didn't. Or did they? They undermined me, man! It was some of the most fun I've had. I had a blast.'