Holly Hunter is well aware that much is being made of how cable is providing actresses over 40 with some of the best roles in television or feature films. There's Kyra Sedgwick in "The Closer," Mary Louise Parker in "Weeds," Glenn Close in "Damages" and Hunter herself as an Oklahoma City Police Department detective in the middle of a spiritual crisis on TNT's "Saving Grace."

The 49-year-old Oscar winner thinks the best roles these days are often on cable regardless of gender.
"It’s both actors and actresses," she said when we spoke last week. "It’s interesting to look at the career of James Gandolfini. He’sfantastic and he’s basically a guy I did not know...I did not know his work before “The Sopranos."

The first nine episodes of the show have already aired. After a brief hiatus, the series returns Monday with the first of four new episodes to air throughout the month.

Although has done several television movies over the years and won Emmys for "Roe vs. Wade" and "The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom," "Grace" is Hunter's first television series. She said she jumped at the chance to play the chain smoking, alcoholic, promiscuous, adulterous and dishonest police detective.

“One of the fantastic things about cable, similar to an independent movie, is you’re not going for a huge audience...it allows for much more freedom of expression. You’re not fashioning something for a lowest common denomator. That has been appealing to me."

The show's twist is that Grace meets up with her own personal angel (played by Leon Rippy) after he comes to save her from hell by staging an accident in which she appears to kill a someone while driving after one of her drinking binges.

“I just really wanted to play her. I felt she was a really adult character...she’s complex. If
this script had come to me 15 years ago as a TV show or a feature, I would have said yes to it. But the fact is, this would not have been on television 15 years ago. This project came to me at the time that it could."

"Grace" has already been renewed for a 15-episode second season. For the star of such films as “The Piano,” “Broadcast News,” "Living Out Loud," and “Thirteen,” doing the show "is such an unexpected world for me to have 13 hours of exploring the same character with the same cast. I’ve just loved that. That’s been nothing but positive for me. And it’s so exciting to think about going back and having this whole other unknown life with Grace.”

But life is not all work. Holly is the mother of twin boys who turn 2 next month so she is not planning to do any work until "Grace" resumes production next year.

“I’ve just totally taken a break which is really welcomed and which is what I’ve done my entire career," she said. "I’ve always been an actress who really likes to have time off. Work is very intense and I like to intensly leave it.”