In the 2000s, she was the ultimate ‘girl next door’. Here’s what Elisha Cuthbert is up to now

The label ‘girl next door’ gets thrown around a lot, but considering Elisha Cuthbert was the star of a movie of the same name, she’s arguably synonymous with it.

She might not be a household name now, but the Canadian actress was undoubtedly one of Hollywood‘s brightest young things back in the early 2000s, racking up plenty of on-screen roles and becoming a fixture in magazines.

Let’s take a look at how she rose to stardom, and what she’s up to now.

Cuthbert’s career started when she was a child, and she made her first on-screen appearance in hit kids’ series Are You Afraid of the Dark? before picking up movie roles.

She’d done plenty of acting work in her homeland before breaking into Hollywood in 2001 with her role as Kim, the daughter of Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer, in hit TV drama 24.

The show won plenty of acclaim and earned the actress Screen Actors Guild Award nominations.

In 2003, two roles – Old School and Love Actually – helped cement Cuthbert’s presence in the public eye

Love Actually fans will remember her as Carol-Anne, one of the fawning girls Colin meets during his trip to the US, when he lands in on a “typical American bar”. (“What do you call that?” “Uh, ‘bottle’.”)

In 2004 came teen comedy The Girl Next Door, in which she played the titular character.

She quickly became something of a 2000s ‘It girl’, thanks to her style and choppy of-the-era haircut – one many a 2000s gal took to her hairdresser as inspiration.

Some of Cuthbert’s other memorable roles at the time include House of Wax and The Quiet, and she also appeared in the music videos for Weezer’s Perfect Situation and Paris Hilton’s Nothing In This World.

She starred alongside the Hilton heiress in House of Wax.

Cuthbert might not be as “everywhere” these days as she was in the early 2000s, but she has continued acting.

Her most recent movie roles were in 2022’s The Cellar and Bandit, while she’s appeared in TV series including Happy Endings, One Big Happy and The Ranch.

In the ultimate testament to her influence, she’s also been a guest judge on Canada’s Drag Race.

Pop stars of the noughties: Then and now

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In recent years, Cuthbert has been candid about the reality of being thrust to fame at a young age with so much attention paid to her looks.

In a 2022 interview on Paris Hilton’s podcast, she admitted she struggled with being perceived as a ‘sex symbol’ thanks to her role in The Girl Next Door and labels attached to her by men’s magazines in the 2000s.

“There was this pressure of, like, maybe the fashion world or whatever saw me as a certain thing when really it was a character,” she said.

“For a long time, I’ve had a lot of disdain for it and wanted to push against it, but I kept getting thrown back into that sort of stereotype. Now I’ve learned to sort of embrace it.”

In an interview the same year with The OC‘s Rachel Bilson, Cuthbert recalled the pressure she was put under to pose for men’s magazines during that era.

“There was really no option back then, though. You were out promoting something. That’s what the [film] studio wanted you to do,” she said.

“We kind of ended up in a space at the time where that was really happening … We were probably too young to be subjected to that, and feeling pressured to do that.

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“Those magazines were viewed by 30 million people …There was no arguing that it was a way to be seen and to promote anything that you were doing at the time.”

The actress is married to ice hockey player Dion Phaneuf and they share two children.

She previously dated fellow hockey star Sean Avery and actors Emile Hirsch and Andrew Keegan.

Cuthbert occasionally shares snapshots of her personal life via Instagram.