helen hunt still hot

At Sundance this January, Academy Award-winner Helen Hunt courted the most attention she's received in over a decade for her brave and baring turn as a sex surrogate in "The Sessions" (then titled "The Surrogate").

The film, inspired by a true story, centers on Mark O'Brien (John Hawkes), a Berkeley author confined to an iron lung due to childhood polio. At 38, O'Brien, who can't move any of his limbs but is not impotent, decides he wants to finally lose his virginity. Enter Hunt as Cheryl Cohen Green, a sex surrogate, who O'Brien calls on to aid him in the process

doesn't take long before Helen Hunt strips off her clothes in The Sessions.

There she stands. Totally, completely, undeniably nude.

As braless and undie-less as the day she was born.

To paraphrase the title of one of her more popular movies, she is as naked as it gets.

Before dirty minds start working overtime, there is a serious plot reason for her state of disrobement in the Sundance hit based on a true story, which opens Friday. She's a certified sex surrogate from Berkeley, Calif., named Cheryl. Her patient? Disabled journalist and poet Mark O'Brien, his polio-weakened body left immobile, distorted and often encased in an iron lung.

At the advanced age of 38, he wishes to relieve himself of his virginity, and she is the chosen one.

"Both director Ben Lewin and I felt I should get naked right away," Hunt explains. "Now that we're in there, there's no going back. It's going to be an intimate film."

When it comes to those time-honored tropes that impress Oscar voters — accents, disabilities, nudity — no film seems more stacked than The Sessions, which tells the real-life tale of handicapped writer Mark O'Brien (John Hawkes), who hires a Boston-accented sex surrogate (Helen Hunt) to relieve him of his long-held virginity. But this comedy-drama is even more than the sum of its award-worthy parts, thanks to nimble tonal work from writer-director Ben Lewin and, in particular, brave and warm performances from both Hawkes and Hunt. Last week, Vulture sat down with Hunt for a frank discussion of how she navigated all those nude scenes and the detail that was most important in nailing her character.