Published: June 22, 2026
By Movieguide® Staff
After four years out of the spotlight, actress Elisha Cuthbert is back on screen — and she says the time she spent at home was the best decision she’s ever made.
“I realized I worked all four years through our first child,” Cuthbert told the TODAY SHOW on June 17. “And it was hard to separate that mom from the working person I was. So, when we had our second [kid], I just felt like I didn’t want to waste any second of it and I didn’t want to be on set.”
Cuthbert, 43, built her name playing Kim Bauer in Fox’s thriller 24 and the quick-witted Penny on ABC’s comedy HAPPY ENDINGS. She began modeling at 13 and spent nearly three decades in the industry before choosing family over fame. Her final major credit before the break was Netflix’s THE RANCH, which ended its run in 2020.
Now she’s returned with EVERY YEAR AFTER, a new Prime Video series that dropped all eight episodes June 10. The show adapts Canadian author Carley Fortune’s bestselling novel Every Summer After, a BookTok phenomenon that translates easily to the screen. Cuthbert plays Sue Florek, a widow who raised her sons alone after her husband’s death — a character whose maternal resilience mirrors what Cuthbert spent four years living.
“The show is so beautiful, and I get to play a mother, which felt correct on so many levels,” she told PEOPLE. “Sue is just so joyful and loving and maternal — it all felt really organic and great.”
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Cuthbert shares two children — daughter Zaphire, 8, and son Fable, 3 — with her husband, retired NHL player Dion Phaneuf, whom she married in 2013. She says once her youngest was born, there was simply no contest.
“I just felt like I needed to be at home with the kids, and I enjoyed every minute,” she said. “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.”
She’s not the first woman in Hollywood to make that call and not regret it. Actress Sarah Michelle Gellar — known to an entire generation as the title character in BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER — walked away from acting after her co-star Robin Williams died and her short-lived CBS sitcom THE CRAZY ONES folded. She’s spoken plainly about what she found on the other side.
“I’ll never get that time back with my kids,” Gellar said. “I didn’t miss a show, a performance, a first step, a lost tooth. There was every moment I was able to be there for, and that’s not something you can do as a working actor.”
Phoebe Cates — the breakout star of FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH — took the quietest exit of all. She stepped away from acting in the 1990s to raise her children with actor Kevin Kline, and by most accounts never looked back. Audrey Hepburn did something similar decades earlier, largely stepping back from screens after 1967 to be what she herself called a “full-time mother.”
There’s a throughline in all of it: certain seasons don’t come back around. Cuthbert chose to be fully present for hers, and EVERY YEAR AFTER is what she came home to on the other side.
“It was a nice, smooth transition back to work,” she said. “It was refreshing.”
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