'Cobra Kai' Actress Courtney Henggeler Quits Acting

Cobra Kai wrapped its six seasons (on two different streaming platforms) in February of this year (ahead of this summer’s theatrical release, Karate Kid: Legends. It also, as it turns out, is a wrap on Courtney Henggeler’s acting career.

The actress, who played the wife of Ralph Macchio’s Daniel LaRusso, Amanda LaRusso, announced on her Substack a couple of weeks ago (via EW) that she’s had enough.

“After 20 plus years of fighting the good fight in the acting business, I hung up my gloves on Friday. I called my agents and told them I was tapping out. I no longer wanted to be a cog in the wheel of the machine.”

I’ll be honest: Outside of Cobra Kai, I wasn’t familiar with Henggeler, who has consistently acted since 2003, although almost all of her roles were bit parts in movies I’d never heard of or in one or two episode stints as a guest actress on television shows (prior to Cobra Kai, five episodes of Mom appears to have been her most significant role). I did like her on Cobra Kai, and she does seem well suited to half-hour comedies (a dying genre, in and of themselves).

But Henggeler is done.

“All I’ve ever known in my professional life was acting,” she wrote on her Substack. “But not even the art or craft of acting. All I’ve truly ever knew was the hustle. The hustle, the grind, sprinkled occassionally with the odd acting job. Perhaps a line or two to TV’s Dr. House - “Sorry” (that’s it. That was my line. Genius).”

She just got tired of the hustle, writing that it wasn’t the acting she disliked, but “the gauntlet I had to run to reach the acting. What once felt necessary, something I willingly participated in, even celebrated, became stifling.”

It’s a tough racket, tougher still of late. I hope she finds success in other aspects of her life.