Elisha Cuthbert: I Was Pressured Into Posing For Mens Magazines As A Young Actor

Elisha Cuthbert doesn’t seem to look back at her Maxim title of “TV’s Most Beautiful Woman ” with much pride.

On the “Broad Ideas with Rachel Bilson ” podcast on Monday, the “24” star was asked about her reign as a men’s magazine it-girl in the early 2000s and 2010s — and Cuthbert, 39, indicated that she never wanted to be part of “that whole circus.”

“There was really no option back then,” she said of avoiding shoots for men’s magazines that highly sexualized women and typically ranked them on their physical appearance. “That’s what the [film] studio wanted you to do.”

“The Ranch” star acknowledged that at the time, these types of photoshoots were pretty common in her industry. 

“We kinda ended up in a space at the time where that was really happening. I mean, Halle Berry was doing it, for God’s sake ... Jennifer Aniston was doing it,” she said. “We were probably too young to be subjected to that, and feeling pressured to do that.”

Although Cuthbert admitted that the popular magazines she was featured in, like FHM, had millions of subscribers and offered “a way to be seen and to promote anything you were doing at time,” she did question who had the authority to rate her attractiveness.

“What was that list? It was ridiculous!” she said, later adding: “It’s not like I won an Olympic medal. It was just some list some random magazine decided to create.”

She also pointed out that although the culture has shifted, her Maxim magazine title that she won in 2013 still holds some kind of clout.

“When someone reads my bio, those things come up,” she said, referring to her magazine titles. “They actually don’t mean anything in regards to me as a person or my career.”

In April, Cuthbert spoke to The Daily Beast  about how she was branded as a sex symbol very early in her career thanks to her role as a porn star in 2004’s “The Girl Next Door.”

She told the publication that when she first began posing for men’s magazines, it felt “liberating” and “we were doing some pretty cool photoshoots.” But the “Happy Endings” star said that when the magazines began ranking women, she started to feel at odds with the messaging.

“Looking back on them, I didn’t love doing them — especially when they started to become repetitive, and the dialogue became about ‘Who’s the sexiest?’ and ‘Who’s the prettiest?’ in a competitive way, and feeling objectified and putting out this persona of, ‘This is what I represent.’ Because that really wasn’t the case.”

She added:

“It wasn’t a true representation of me as an artist, that’s for sure. It was one facet. And unfortunately, a lot of people just went, ‘Oh, she’s the sexy girl.’ We were all a lot more than that.”