Elisha Cuthbert has said she felt there was “no option” to decline posing in men’s magazines as a young actor in the early Noughties.
Cuthbert rose to fame playing the daughter of Kiefer Sutherland’s character Jack Bauer in the hit series 24. She went on to star in films including romantic-comedies such as The Girl Next Door and Love Actually.
As an actor in the early Noughties, she appeared in numerous men’s magazines such as Maxim and FHM.
During a recent appearance on Rachel Bilson’s Broad Ideas podcast, Cuthbert said she felt she didn’t have a choice when it came to appearing in sexually suggestive photoshoots.
“There was really no option back then,” she said. “That’s what the [film] studio wanted you to do.”
The 39-year-old said that many female actors were expected to participate in such shoots. “We kinda ended up in a space at the time where that was really happening,” she said.
“I mean, Halle Berry was doing it, for God’s sake. Jennifer Aniston was doing it. We were probably too young to be subjected to that, and feeling pressured to do that.”
Cuthbert was 19 when she starred in the first series of 24 in 2001.
She went on to speak about how many of the images from these photoshoots are still accessible online and the impact that they have on her children.
“This is what I have to explain to my kids,” she said of the photos. “This weird, bizarre outfit and hair extensions. And you know what’s so crazy? I don’t even know how much of those pictures are even accurate as far as, like, airbrushing. I was in my early twenties. I didn’t look bad, but did I look that? I don’t even know if the fantasy’s real.”
The actor shares two children, a daughter born in 2017 and a son born in 2022, with her husband, professional hockey player Dion Phaneuf.
