ACADEMY AWARD WINNER AND “NCIS: LOS ANGELES” STAR LINDA HUNT TELLS “CBS SUNDAY MORNING WITH CHARLES OSGOOD” THAT ACTING MADE HER FEEL “BIGGER THAN LIFE”

HUNT TELLS LEE COWAN: “YOU KNOW WHAT I THINK IT WAS ABOUT – I THINK I COULD PRETEND TO BE ANYTHING”

Teased as a child for being short, Academy Award winner Linda Hunt discovered early on that acting gave her the freedom to be “bigger than life,” she says in an interview with CBS SUNDAY MORNING WITH CHARLES OSGOOD to be broadcast Feb. 24 (9:00 AM, ET) on the CBS Television Network.

Growing up in Westport, Conn., Hunt found she was always smaller than those around her, leading people to either want to take care of her or push her around, she says. “I was teased a lot, sure I was, of course,” she tells Lee Cowan. “Sort of 4th grade, 5th grade, 6th grade, everybody was taking their spurts, except me. I was not growing up.”

Hunt also tells Cowan it was a Broadway production of “Peter Pan” that led her to acting.

“It was bigger than life,” she says. “And in some sense, I longed to be bigger than life, because I wasn’t.” Being on stage helped her overcome any height challenges she faced, she says. “You know what I think it was about? I think that I could pretend to be anything.”

And while her parents were initially concerned that acting wouldn’t be a suitable career – her father wanted her to be a school teacher – she proved she’d be okay by winning an Academy Award in 1984 for her work in “The Year of Living Dangerously.” “It was proof from people he didn’t know, from a world he didn’t know, that, you know, his baby girl was going to be all right,” Hunt tells Cowan.

Cowan’s interview with Hunt will be broadcast Feb. 24 on CBS SUNDAY MORNING on the CBS Television Network. Rand Morrison is the executive producer.

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