Good roles are hard to get, so Holly's always on the hunt

Holly Hunter has played wacky in Raising Arizona, wilful in The Piano, and weird in Crash. Now, she's giving voice to the feisty Elastigirl in The Incredibles.

But the 46-year-old actress says her versatility doesn't count for much in today's youth-obsessed Hollywood. 'As actresses get older, it becomes harder and harder to find great work in Hollywood,' she says.

'There's an ebb and flow of opportunity, and that becomes more extreme the older I get. It's a problem that affects everybody, but it affects female actresses more than males, for sure.'

But it's not all doom and gloom. 'I think that American film is in a very healthy, hearty state right now,' Hunter says. 'Perhaps every era seems worse than the one before it. Back when we made Broadcast News, we were still feeling we couldn't live up to all the great films made in the 1970s.'

Even so, Broadcast News was an anomaly, she says. 'It was an unusual, extra-ordinary film for its time. Not everything was like that in the 80s. Every generation, every era, has its share of amazing movies, including this one.'

The big thing for an actress is to direct some of those great films your way, she says. That's always difficult in competitive Hollywood. Even the bankability that comes with an Oscar win (Hunter won for The Piano in 1993) fades. 'There's definitely a shelf-life to an Academy Award,' she says. 'Nowadays, I still get sent a lot of scripts. Are they any good? Not always. The thing is, I want to act. You have to make choices from the material you get, and that may not be fabulous.'