EXCLUSIVE: Helen Hunt's Coping Mechanism: 'Usually I'm Stoned'

Actress Helen Hunt (AP)

For seven years, Helen Hunt kept millions of Americans laughing as the lovable Jamie Stemple Buchman on the hit NBC sitcom “Mad About You,” and it seems the 47-year-old still has a wry sense of humor when it comes to sharing her secret for keeping sane in the hectic world of Hollywood.

“Usually I’m stoned, even right now I’m stoned, I’m barely here,” she joked to FOX411’s Pop Tarts while promoting her upcoming drama “Every Day” in Los Angeles on Tuesday. “No, I just do the best I can and am grateful for my life.”

Hunt plays Jeannie, a woman struggling to keep her life and family together in Richard Levine’s “Every Day” – cracks in her marriage to college sweetheart Ned (Liev Schreiber) begin to surface as she tends to her estranged, ailing father who moves into the family home. Making things harder, Hunt's character is trying to raise two boys, one who is gay and trying to find his own feet, all while attempting to resurrect her “non-existent career.”

But away from movie sets, Hunt is pretty confident she knows just how to balance both the professional and personal aspects of her life.

“I’ve made choices that work with my family. I want to work and I want to be with my family so I just walk the tight-rope of showing up for both those things,” she said.

However, her co-star Schreiber (who is married to fellow A-list star Naomi Watts, with whom he has two young sons) said striking a happy medium between film and family isn’t so simple.

“It is really difficult, there is something truly heroic about it,” he told us. “We try to stay together as much as possible; keeping the children as close to you as possible is the best thing you can do in this industry.”

Schreiber also admitted that he and Watts are both “hypochondriacs” when it comes to anything that seems even mildly wrong with their boys, although it sounds like he’s the instigator for at least some of the danger.

“The chaos, I like the chaos of having two boys. You’re reminded of your own childhood, that’s really fun when you’re hanging out with a two-year-old and three-year-old all day and you recall how much fun it was at that age – jumping off the front of a headboard,” he said.

And it’s too bad for Schreiber that HBO's hit “Big Love” is in its final season as the actor, who currently stars as an uninspired TV show writer in “Every Day,” would have loved a job writing about the ins and outs of polygamy.

“I’ve been thinking about ‘Big Love,’ that must be such an interesting gig – writing that, and re-inventing that show after show,” he mused.