Helen Hunt opens up about rejecting Hollywood's beauty standards after years of 'misery and shame'

After years successful the spotlight, Helen Hunt has learned to fto spell of the quality standards that often flood Hollywood. 

During an interrogation with The Flow Space, the 61-year-old histrion opened up astir the "misery and shame" she often felt astir her carnal quality aboriginal successful her vocation and explained however she chose to determination beyond expectations. 

"It felt intolerable not to internalize the mode you’re expected to look," Hunt said. "And [there was] a definite magnitude of misery and shame astir not looking precisely that way."

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Helen Hunt, successful 2024, opened up astir the "misery and shame" astir not looking a definite mode successful the aboriginal days of her career. (John Salangsang/Variety via Getty Images)

Hunt added, "I realized, ‘This could softly ruin your full life.' I made a decision: I’m not playing. Not gonna [let it] instrumentality up a batch of abstraction successful my mind."

Hunt said her attack has been influenced by "The Only Diet There Is," a publication written by the spiritual person Sondra Ray.

"What I took from it is, devour what you privation and emotion each bite, period," she said. 

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Hunt says she nary longer allows the negativity to instrumentality abstraction successful her mind. (Karwai Tang/WireImage)

Hunt isn't the lone '90s heartthrob who has openly spoken astir the struggles she faced arsenic a young star. 

Earlier this year, Christina Applegate got candid astir however the pressures of being portrayed arsenic beauteous and sexy connected "Married… with Children" led to an eating disorder.

"Playing that quality benignant of did things to maine successful my psyche that were nary bueno – similar anorexia," the 53-year-old explained connected her "MeSsy" podcast portion speaking to impermanent and erstwhile "Married… with Children" co-star Katey Sagal.

Applegate opened up astir however puerility stardom led to an eating disorder. (Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Critics Choice Association)

"Yeah, a beauteous atrocious eating upset started erstwhile I was doing that amusement that lasted for a truly agelong time," she said. 

Applegate said she ne'er told anyone astir the upset astatine the clip and was "very, precise backstage astir it."

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"I would fell successful bathrooms to eat, due to the fact that I had truthful overmuch shame astir eating that I would fell connected the airplanes, similar erstwhile we went to London," she said. "I retrieve hiding successful determination to devour similar 1 shrimp, 'cause I was truthful acrophobic if anyone saw maine devour that they’d deliberation I was going to effort to get abdominous oregon something. I don’t know. I was successful specified a acheronian space."

Sagal, who played Applegate’s on-screen parent connected the show, which ran from 1987 until 1997, told her that she "didn’t cognize each that."

Applegate answered, "Yeah, I kept everything adjacent to the chest. There’s a batch of worldly that happened successful the wings of my beingness that you guys didn’t cognize about." 

Fox News Digital's Brie Stimson contributed to this post.