Helen Hanft (born April 4, 1934) is an American actress.
Hanft was born in New York City. She started her theatrical career in the early 1960 during the Golden Age of experimental theater at such venues as La Mama ETC and Caffe Cino and in a few years she became known as "the Helen Hayes of off-off Broadway." Not a great beauty, she nevertheless commanded the stage with her strong Ethel Merman-style comedic talent and ability to satirize her sexuality; she often played eccentric, flamboyant, raunchy characters in many successful plays like the Tom Eyen hits Why Hanna's Skirt Won't Stay Down, Women Behind Bars, Italian American Reconciliation, and The Neon Woman co-starring Divine. She also had a great personal success in the David Rabe play In the Boom Boom Room at Joseph Papp's Public Theatre.
In the middle 1970s Hanft began appearing in movies, some with Woody Allen (Manhattan, 1979; The Purple Rose of Cairo, 1985). She was also a favorite of Paul Mazursky, who cast her in Next Stop, Greenwich Village and Willie & Phil. She had a strong cameos in the 1981 hit Arthur with Dudley Moore, the 1988 comedy License To Drive, and in 1992 she appeared opposite Shirley MacLaine and
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