Elisha Cuthbert reflects on 4-year-long break from acting

Elisha Cuthbert has ended a four-year acting hiatus, opening up about why she chose to step away from the screen entirely after the birth of her second child.

The actress, best known for her roles in 24, Happy Endings and The Girl Next Door, has returned with a role in Prime Video’s romantic drama series Every Year After, all eight episodes of which are now available to stream. 

She plays Sue Florek in the series, based on Carley Fortune’s Every Summer After books.

Speaking on Today, Cuthbert explained that the decision to take time away was a deeply personal one rooted in her experience of balancing motherhood and work. 

“I think after we had our second, I realised, because I had worked all through the first four years of our first child, and it was really hard to separate that mom from the working person I was,” she said. 

“So, when we had our second, I just felt like I didn’t want to waste any second of it and I didn’t want to be on set.”

She described the break as something she actively embraced rather than simply fell into. 

“I just felt like I needed to be at home with the kids and I enjoyed every minute,” she said. 

The decision to return was equally deliberate, prompted by a shift in her family’s circumstances. 

“Now that they’re in school now full time, I feel like I have the space and the energy and the heart to kind of leave them and do it.”

Every Year After, developed for television by Amy B. Harris and Leila Gerstein, follows Percy and Sam, played by Sadie Soverall and Matt Cornett, as two lifelong friends who revisit whether their first love was always meant to be something more.

Cuthbert’s last screen appearances before the hiatus were in 2022’s The Cellar and Bandit. Her return marks her first project since then, and by the sound of it, the timing feels exactly right.