Bonnie Hunt Biography
Described by Entertainment Weekly as “the hands-down best (talk show) guest in America,” Chicago-born Bonnie Hunt began pursuing her acting career while working as a nurse at that city’s Northwestern University Hospital. (Reportedly as late as the early 1990s, she returned to that profession for a month or so each year.) The smart, pixie-like writer-performer co-founded the Chicago improvisational troupe An Impulsive Thing before joining the famed Second City improv group, appearing in their productions “Bright Lights, Night Baseball,” “Jean Paul Sartre and Ringo” and “How Green Were My Values.†After making her feature debut as the waitress who spills toothpicks before a calculating Dustin Hoffman in Barry Levinson’s Oscar-winning Best Picture “Rain Man” (1988), she moved to Los Angeles with a short-lived West Coast offshoot of Second City and turned down three offers from “Saturday Night Live” while working to get her own show on the air.