The actress-director never quite disappeared, but for an Academy Award winner, she sure took it easy for a while.

Hers was not the post-Best Actress pathway of comic book movies or prestige bids; she followed up her Oscar performance in As Good As It Gets with, um, Pay It Forward? But more than a decade later, Helen Hunt has somehow managed to top herself.

In Then She Found Me, which Hunt produced, co-wrote, and directed, she stars as middle-aged schoolteacher April Epner, just married to man-child Ben (Matthew Broderick) and desperately seeking spawn. When Ben quickly deems the hasty nuptials to be a “mistake,” April returns to the drawing board. When her adopted mother suddenly dies, only to be replaced by a feisty talk-show host claiming to be bio-mom (a glammy Bette Midler), April’s life is suddenly in upheaval.