Biography
A former child star who managed to avoid burning out before her teens, Elisha Cuthbert successfully carried the success from
Popular Mechanics for Kids and Are You Afraid of the Dark? into a featured role on the hit FOX series
24 and a successful film career. A Calgary native who landed her first modeling job at the tender age of seven, it was a mere four years later that Cuthbert instinctively knew that she wanted to spend the rest of her days in front of the lens. Following an appearance in the 1997 feature
Dancing on the Moon, Cuthbert landed a job as a field correspondent for the acclaimed Canadian television series
Popular Mechanics for Kids, and her reporting proved so effective that she caught the attention of first lady Hillary Clinton, who invited Cuthbert to Washington for a meeting.
Though she spent the majority of her youth in Montreal, Cuthbert moved to Los Angeles at age 17 in order to pursue an acting career. Featured roles as a reluctant pilot in
Airspeed (1998) and a time traveling teen in
Time at the Top (1999) were soon to follow, and by the time Cuthbert joined the cast of Nickelodeon's Are You Afraid of the Dark? in 1999, it was obvious that her talent was growing. Her role in the made-for-Canadian-television feature
Lucky Girl only furthered her reputation as a dramatically capable actor, and her distinct onscreen facial expressions and convincing performance soon caught the eyes of producers who were preparing a new thriller series for FOX.
Cast as Jack Bauer's (
Kiefer Sutherland) damsel-in-distress daughter, Kimberly in the breakout hit
24, Cuthbert's character suffered through multiple kidnappings and a mountain lion attack over the course of the series' first two seasons. In the episode of
24 in which she shared a scene with the mountain lion, Cuthbert made news when the beast actually attacked her on the film set, sending the frightened actress on a trip to the hospital with an injured hand. On the heels of
24, Cuthbert took a supporting role in the comedy
Old School before appearing in the subsequent romantic comedies
Love Actually (2003) and
The Girl Next Door (2004), the latter of which found her taking the lead as an ex-porn star who becomes the object of affection to a lonely suburban boy unaware of her past.
In 2006 the fair=haired starlet both associate-produced and appeared in the psychological thriller
The Quiet. Starring alongside
Camilla Belle, Cuthbert played a rageful teen bent on murdering her obsessive father. The film didn't impress critics but it did mark Cuthbert's first foray into work behind the camera. Sticking with thrillers, the actress next signed on to Roland Joffe's torture-horror flick
Captivity, a movie that threatened to become more notable for its graphic marketing blitz -- featuring a bound, gagged and presumably deceased Cuthbert -- than for its quality per se. The ads were pulled at the behest of offended parents' groups, as director Joffe insisted his film was not in the same league as
Saw and other sadistic-horror offerings of the time. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide