More than ‘The Girl Next Door’

Elisha Cuthbert embraces change in “The Quiet”

Elisha Cuthbert knew that she was being typecast as the "simple, pretty, quintessential chick," so she was excited to take on "The Quiet" and the role of Dot, an introverted deaf-mute. Until director Jamie Babbit told Cuthbert ("24," "The Girl Next Door") that she was better for the part of Nina, a cheerleader in an incestuous relationship with her father. The actress was far from thrilled.

"Aw, the cheerleader?" Cuthbert recalls thinking. "The good-looking one in school? Here we go again."

But she returned to the script and found more layers to the character, who appears to live an ideal high school life but has more than her share of problems at home, including being forced to welcome Dot as part of the family after the second of Dot's parents is killed. Cuthbert says Nina's fragility made the role a challenge she wasn't sure she could accomplish.

"I always go into a movie playing female characters trying to avoid at all times playing the victim, or playing the whiny one. It's always like, 'I'm going to make these characters strong.' And everything about Nina, to me, was weak," she says. "That was really hard to play. There were moments when we were filming and I just thought, 'I don't know if I can do this.'"

The character's relative depth also gave her respite from the hundreds of parts being offered to her based on her characters in films like "House of Wax."

"Right after I did 'House of Wax' I was getting 300 horror films a day," she says. "It's like, 'Guys, I don't want to see another horror film!' I saw one about crazy vampires, and then I saw a really brilliant script about vampires. You really gotta read every script and read it right until the end because you really never know how it's all going to turn out. You can go from one bad vampire movie to a brilliant vampire movie in less than two days."

Obviously, she wasn't interested in doing more of the same. After she read the script for "The Quiet," Cuthbert met with Babbitt and later attached herself as an associate producer, which she says she thinks helped the film secure funding. The actress says that the movie provides an almost voyeuristic, fly-on-the-wall view of some tough issues.

"I sort of was like, 'I shouldn't be watching this, but I am,'" she says.

Of course, fans are most used to watching her in "24" and "The Girl Next Door," and she was recognized from these roles when Cuthbert stopped into Melvin B's on Rush Street.

"The older crowd asks me about '24.' I got a lot of younger crowds asking me about 'The Girl Next Door.' A lot of guys," she says. "I have a lot of girls that come up and say 'I love that movie,' so it's cool, I get both. [But] the guys seem to recognize me from that."

People also often ask her to sign stills of herself from her movies, and Cuthbert says the images don't even seem like her.

"It's completely flattering, and it's a good thing, but it is funny to sort of see those photos and imagine a character from a film," she says.

That's because she's being asked to sign pictures of herself in a bikini, sporting long, fake hair. And even though Cuthbert says that image is only a small part of her, it's certainly helped her land an ever-changing slot on multiple lists of the world's sexiest women.

"I'm pretty much a yo-yo as far as that goes. I've been, like, 9, and then I've been, like, 52," she says. "You know what changes? A movie coming out. That's what changes, and then everyone sees you again, and you kinda climb the list and then you go away for a bit and you get a little bit lower on the list."

Cuthbert hopes that her role in "The Quiet" will have a positive impact on her list-defined sexiness.

"Well, she's kinda hot, I guess," she says of Nina. "Hopefully I'll climb the ladder. Then I've got 'He Was a Quiet Man' coming out and I play a quadriplegic; I feel like I might be a little bit lower on the scale. I don't really move [in the movie]. So I have a feeling I might be like 99.

"Just being on the list is a big deal because not a lot of people are on it, and it's very flattering. But I think it has a little bit to do with how much you're out there. But at least it's because of the movies and it's not because of the outfits."

By Matt Pais