The Case of the Disappearing Actress: Elisha Cuthbert

In the early 2000s, Elisha Cuthbert was kind of everywhere, in roles both big and small. She was the kind of actress labeled “the next it” girl because they had no idea what else to say about a woman who looked like that and could also deliver a perfectly timed line. She played Kim Bauer on 24, survived a mountain lion and a terrorist plot, and made teenage boys deeply uncomfortable in The Girl Next Door (along with the More Cowbell of Actors, Timothy Olyphant).

She was in Old School. She was in Love Actually along with another Case of the Disappearing Actress, January Jones. She was on every red carpet, every Hot 100 list, every late-night talk show couch. She was it.

And then she elevated herself from Jack Bauer’s daughter, B-horror movie heroine, and hilarious eye candy by showing impeccable comedic skills in Pajiba favorite Happy Endings, which ran for three seasons—three seasons too few. God, she was perfect on that, in what — based on those late-night talk show appearances — the role she was meant to play.

After that, she landed on, ugh, The Ranch, the Netflix sitcom that lasted far longer than it had any right to and starred Ashton Kutcher, Sam Elliott, and a rotating cast of vaguely disgraced actors (hello, Danny Masterson!). She played Abby, the sweet, weary wife who served mostly to remind us how bored Cuthbert looked pretending to care about cattle.

When The Ranch ended in 2020, she was nearing the age of 40, and as we’ve so depressingly cataloged on this site, the years between 40 and 50 are too often lost decades for actresses, stuck between playing love interests and moms.

She hasn’t completely disappeared. She resurfaced in one episode of the Canadian sitcom Jann, and popped up in a horror film called The Cellar, which premiered at SXSW and promptly vanished into the Shudder void. In 2022, she starred in a Mel Gibson action movie called Bandit. I’m not talking about low-rent Marky Mark Mel Gibson movie, or even S. Craig Zahler Mel Gibson movie. This was bargain-bin, barely-marketed, probably-tax-sheltered, straight-to-Tubi Mel Gibson.

She is nearly 42 now. And Hollywood has very little interest in actresses who are 42, unless they’re already Oscar winners, willing to produce their own vehicles, or play someone’s exhausted mom in a prestige miniseries. Cuthbert doesn’t appear to be doing any of those things. Her Instagram is scant and mostly mom content (although I briefly got lost over on Eliza Coupe’s Insta today, too, and it’s fun—except all the clapping back she’s been forced to do because people are awful).

It sucks. Cuthbert got caught in that impossible space between romantic-comedy lead/horror-movie final girl and character actor. What happened to Cuthbert is precisely what happens to most actresses once they turn 40 and Hollywood can no longer imagine what to do with them. It’s like studio executives just throw their hands up and give all the roles to Rose Byrne because everyone else in that age range is apparently invisible to them. If there were any justice, someone would come up with a winking, self-referential sitcom based on Cuthbert and January Jones’ characters in Love Actually. Unfortunately, if they did, they’d probably cast Rose Byrne in that, too (no offense to Byrne, who is magic).