Last year, Helen Hunt attended the Vanity Fair Oscars party in Beverly Hills, wearing a stunning, coral-colored Christian Siriano halter dress and a pair of to-die-for open-toe heels. Walking the red carpet, she looked the very picture of a glamorous star, one who has won an Academy Award, four Golden Globes and four Emmys.

Inside the party, however, Hunt took on a different role: that of a woman who could not wait to kick off her shoes. “I was like, ‘This has to be done. I have to be done now—I can’t walk!,'” she recalls. “I cannot walk. I cannot walk to get my drink at the bar or my In-N-Out Burger, which they serve. There has to be a new ethos about women and shoes. I want them to invent a new way to do it without hurting your feet!”

It sounds like the kind of demand you’d hear from Winnie Landell, the ruthless, no-holds-barred network executive Hunt plays on the HBO Max series Hacks. But while Hunt says it’s been “so fun” playing “the alpha person” alongside formidable female co-stars Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder—not to mention getting to trash-talk opponents on a pickleball court—in real life, she has little in common with her character.

For one thing, she isn’t that into pickleball. (Hunt prefers yoga and taking long walks with her three-legged rescue dog, Emma.) For another, she knows how to practice restraint, as evidenced by her enviable approach to eating—”I’m never going to go down a sugar rabbit hole, because I immediately feel anxious and weepy,” she says—not to mention being stuck in traffic. “I usually let people [cut] in,” she admits.

And even though Hunt has enjoyed the kind of Hollywood success—think mega-hit movies like Twister and Castaway—that could turn an actress into a diva, when it’s pointed out during this Zoom interview that her Emmys are visible at the very top of a bookshelf behind her in the office of her Los Angeles home, she immediately adjusts the computer screen so they’re out of frame. “I didn’t mean for that,” she says apologetically. “It’s a bit overkill.”

This discreet, laid-back vibe infuses most aspects of Hunt’s life. She meditates daily, takes college literature classes as an antidote to Instagram scrolling and is visibly thrilled to call herself a “super-fan on the sidelines” for the band Widemouth, which is fronted by her daughter, Makena Carnahan, 21 (whose father is Hunt’s ex Matthew Carnahan).

Then there’s her “lovely” relationship with Big Little Lies actor Jeffrey Nordling, 63, a former flame she reconnected with a few years ago. “We dated in 1988!” she reveals. “I’ve never really talked about that. And I always thought he was lovely and sweet and talented and dreamy. We both had very different lives for decades, and then, in some crazy way, found each other again.”

Having survived blockbuster-level fame—as well as the relentless body shaming that actresses of her generation endured, as Demi Moore talked about when promoting The Substance last year—it’s clear Hunt has made deliberate choices to prioritize her mental and emotional well-being. When asked what she loves most about being this age—she turns 62 on June 15—she replies, “that when I get really upset about something, or worried about something, or anxious about something, I have tools. I have tools to come back and get a bigger view. I don’t think I had those when I was younger.”

‘I’ve Done Work on Myself’

Hunt grew up in Southern California as part of a showbiz family: both her father and uncle were directors, and her mother was a photographer. She started acting in elementary school and, by the 1980s, was part of a group of rising stars—including Sarah Jessica Parker (her co-star in 1985’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun), Matthew Broderick (1987’s Project X) and Jodie Foster (1988’s Stealing Home)—who have since become household names. (You can watch what she has to say about these early roles and others here.)

But her career really took off in 1992, when she was cast alongside Paul Reiser in the NBC sitcom Mad About You. Suddenly, Hunt found herself juggling multiple projects—including her Oscar-winning turn in As Good as it Gets, opposite Jack Nicholson—even as her health suffered. “I was just, like, pushing myself with no thought of, ‘Well, maybe it’s too much,'” she recalls. “My body went, ‘It’s too much.'”

That’s when a friend first suggested she try meditation. “I went, ‘Oh, right.’ I took a class when I was 18 and thought it would change my life and then blew it off,” she says. “But pain is a really good motivator.” She has now maintained a daily, 20-minute practice for more than three decades. “Just showing up and doing it, over time, I think it matters,” she says. “For me, it’s not even like I want to do it to feel good. Now I have to do it to not feel bad!”

Hunt also made a conscious effort to release herself from the intense—and intensely cruel—body shaming that celebrity tabloids routinely subjected actresses to during the ’90s and early aughts. “It felt impossible not to internalize the way you’re supposed to look,” Hunt reveals. “And [there was] a certain amount of misery and shame around not looking exactly that way.”

At some point, however, “I realized, ‘This could quietly ruin your whole life,'” Hunt says, adding that she rarely talks about this aspect of her Hollywood experience. “I made a decision: I’m not playing. Not gonna [let it] take up a lot of space in my mind.” Notes her longtime friend and Mad About Your co-star Paul Reiser, “She has always been terrifically centered and forthright about setting up boundaries.”

She does, however, credit the book, The Only Diet There Is, by spiritual leader Sondra Ray, for helping her develop a healthy relationship with food. “What I took from it,” she shares, “is eat what you want and love every bite, period.”

By the time Hunt became a mother in 2004, just a month shy of her 40th birthday, she felt ready for the challenge of parenting, in part because, “I’ve done work on myself, you know? So hopefully, my daughter got the benefit of that.” Today, Hunt calls her daughter “the coolest person I know,” and prides herself on their close relationship; in fact, when Hunt and Carnahan split in 2017 after some 16 years, it was Makena who encouraged her mother to look for love again. “The sentence was, ‘You should date someone hot,'” Hunt recalls. “I mentioned [Nordling], and we had mutual friends, and we had breakfast.” They’ve been together ever since.

Moving Forward—And Looking Back

Hunt doesn’t take her good fortune for granted, especially knowing that roles for women of a certain age can be hard to find. “When you’re working, the business is fine, and when you’re not, it’s horrible,” she admits. “I always tell friends who have different professions: ‘You know, that really unsettling thing that happens every 10 years or so where you have to find a new job? That’s four times a year for actors!'”

To keep anxiety at bay, Hunt says she does “all the usual things—you know, write the gratitude list. Take a walk. Pause before speaking when you possibly can. Have enough alone time. Have enough time reaching out to other people.” She also loves a good laugh, Reiser says, adding that what cracks her up, “are often the silliest, least sophisticated things in the world. And when you get that crying-level laugh out of her… it’s a very good thing.”

She is also focused on creating her own projects; Hunt has previously written and directed two films, including 2014’s Ride, co-starring Luke Wilson and inspired by her passion for surfing, a sport she took up shortly after Makena was born. “I saw a woman in Hawaii who, like, jumped out of the water, picked up her baby, pulled her bathing suit down, nursed, gave her baby back to, presumably, the baby’s dad, and went back to the water,” Hunt recalls. “I was like, I want to be her.”

She also still has aspirations of being a college graduate, a rite of passage she missed out on to pursue her career. “It was always an unchecked box,” she says, explaining her decision to sign up for college-level English courses. “I’m checking it very slowly.” Which is a pace that helps keep her moving steadily forward—the direction she prefers to focus on. “I never look back,” she says. “I just work on the next thing.”

Recently, however, Hunt has been preparing to sell her five-bedroom, Spanish-style home. The process has forced her to go through “bins and piles of old things,” and she’s been coming across lots of memorabilia from her past, including nice notes from people she has worked with, as well as scrapbook-worthy photos from set.

The experience has brought her more joy than she’d expected. “It’s been a good reminder of how much bounty I’ve had in my life—how much work I’ve gotten to do, and how many people I’ve gotten to work with,” she says. “I feel really lucky.”