Elisha Cuthbert Says She Felt ‘Pressured’ To Pose For Men’s Magazines In Early 2000s

etcanada.com:

Elisha Cuthbert is opening up about the pressures she experienced as a young actress in the early 2000s. The “Cellar” star, 39, recently appeared on Rachel Bilson’s “Broad Ideas” podcast and shared that she felt she didn’t have an option when it came to posing for sexually-suggestive photoshoots in men’s magazine such as Maxim and FHM if she wanted to promote her career as an actress in her 20s. “There was really no option back then,” Cuthbert said. “That’s what the [film] studio wanted you to do.” READ MORE: Elisha Cuthbert Was Once Hospitalized After Being Attacked By A Mountain Lion On The Set Of ’24’ Cuthbert was often at the top of several “hot lists” published by men’s mags, even earning the title of “Most Beautiful Woman in Television” from Maxim in 2013. “It’s not like I won an Olympic medal,” she said of this kind of praise. “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.” Cuthbert says that actresses of all stripes were expected to participate in aggressively sexualized photoshoots. “We kinda ended up in a space at the time where that was really happening,” she recalled. “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.” Today, with many of the photos from her 20s still accessible online, Cuthbert thinks about how they may impact her children. “This is what I have to explain to my kids,” she said of the pics. “This weird, bizarre outfit and hair extensions.