Sam Amico
Back in the early 2000s, Elisha Cuthbert promoted her movies by posing in men’s magazines such as FHM and Maxim, though it wasn’t necessarily entirely by choice.
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Instead, Cuthbert says she felt it wasn’t really an option — that she basically had to do it to be considered a success. Cuthbert, 39, revealed as much in an interview with Rachel Bilson on the Broad Ideas podcast.
“There was really no option back then,” Cuthbert said. “That’s what the [film] studio wanted you to do. … We kinda ended up in a space at the time where that was really happening.”
Elisha Cuthbert on Instagram
Besides, she wasn’t the only one.
“I mean, Halle Berry was doing it, for God’s sake,’ Cuthbert added. “Jennifer Aniston was doing it. We were probably too young to be subjected to that, and feeling pressured to do that.”
Cuthbert has two children with husband Dion Phaneuf and says she had to explain the art of airbrushing. That’s what magazines did before the “filter” rolled out on social media.
“This is what I have to explain to my kids. This weird, bizarre outfit and hair extensions,” she said. “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.
A Mom of Two
“I was in my early 20s. I didn’t look bad, but did I look that?,” she noted. I don’t even know if the fantasy’s real.”
Cuthbert’s career began as a child actress in Popular Mechanics for Kids. She later became a model and even had a role in the move Old School, as well as played Kim Bauer on 24. The actress was named the “Most Beautiful Woman in Television” by Maxim in 2013.
Cuthbert shrugged off the honor.
“It’s not like I won an Olympic medal,” she said. “It was just some list some random magazine decided to create.
“When someone reads my bio, those things come up. They actually don’t mean anything in regards to me as a person or my career.”
