Helen Hunt finally makes it her own

But, Lipman said, in the end, it wasn't Sigourney Weaver who brought "Then She Found Me" to the screen. It was another actress, 1997 Academy Award-winner Helen Hunt. "For 10 years it was a full-time job of Helen Hunt's," Lipman said. "She wrote it, she directed it and she got the financing." Lipman said her first contact with Hunt was in "late 2004 or early 2005" when she got a copy of the first draft of the screenplay. It was then that she learned about the alterations to the plot, specifically that the character of the bookish Dwight had been eliminated, and that Hunt had added a marriage, betrayal and divorce for the character of April Epner, along with a different romance. She e-mailed Hunt's manager with her thoughts. "I had written that I first wondered, 'where are my characters?' Then I just fell in love with the screenplay." Lipman said, "I got a lovely long email back from [Hunt] right away . how happy she was that I liked it." She wrote back [about the original screenplay] that she loved my romance, but that she needed to have a north star for the movie, and that was the betrayal," Lipman said. According to Lipman, the original plot of "Then She Found Me" revolves around "two misfits who find each other." "But movies about that [kind of personal interaction] are kind of the Australian films that are sweet, and you rent," Lipman admitted. "Now we have Colin Firth and Matthew Broderick . neither were characters in the book," she said. And, she said, Bette Middler's portrayal of April's larger-than-life mother, Bernice, is "taken directly from the book." "I'll tell you, if this had happened 18-and-a-half years ago I would have been more sentimental about my own storyline and my own characters. Sentimental and a little dismayed," Lipman said of the changes. "But the movie's wonderful. When someone changes the plot to make it cornier or cheaper or a more commercial movie, that's one thing. "But when it's changed for various reasons of plot or more effective moviemaking and the author loves it. "I laughed, I cried, I loved it," she said. And she still needs to buy a dress for the movie premiere.