(Cover) - EN Showbiz - Helen Hunt honours her physical well-being.

The 49-year-old star is mother to eight-year-old daughter Makena.

Helen is a very healthy woman and tries to instill similar self-love values in her tyke.

"I do eat well. I try to love my body,'' she told USA Today.

"That is what I tell my daughter. I say, 'Love every bite of food. Love your body. We're all going to be dead soon.' Actually I don't say that last thing to her."

Helen stars alongside William H. Macy and John Hawkes in drama The Sessions, which is about a man in an iron lung who visits a sex surrogate, portrayed by Helen, to lose his virginity.

The actress didn't feel the need to work out excessively before filming sex scenes.

"I didn't have time to get fit. I don't know," she explained.

"What would I have done? Gone to Pilates to get ready?"

In order to depict intercourse with a disabled man authentically, Helen looked to 1978 film Coming Home for inspiration.

In the classic, Jon Voight is an injured veteran who fornicates with Jane Fonda's persona.

"I thought about that and [that film's] really stayed with me," she said.

"It was so intimate and had someone with a disability. It is a perfect tool through which we look at ourselves. We all feel disabled in some way. We all feel imperfect. It's hard to be looked at for various reasons."

The Sessions will be released in US theatres this weekend. (C) Cover Media