Elisabeth Shue Is Nearing 60, And Fans Are Reeling Over The Way She Is Now

And you would’ve had plenty of opportunities to watch Shue as the 2020s kicked into gear. Not only did she revisit her role from The Karate Kid, Ali Mills in Cobra Kai, but she also appeared in a number of other fresh productions. These included On the Verge and Amazon smash hit The Boys. So the Leaving Las Vegas star is apparently now in high demand once again. Good on Shue!

They say that women actors get fewer roles as time goes by, but that doesn’t appear true for Shue. The Cocktail star is in her late 50s now, and she’s finding plenty of work with the boom in streaming. But a fair few years have passed since the actor starred opposite Tom Cruise, and she is not the sex kitten she once was. Still, fans have been stunned to see how she looks today.

Those close to Shue may have been surprised about where she ended up. She grew up in a boys’ world, after all, and was the only girl among four siblings. That didn’t put her off being competitive though: she’d happily take the boys on at soccer. And later in her childhood she had an interest in gymnastics, too.

But the young Shue was always going to be an actor. Even education didn’t get in her way, as she started her path in the acting profession when still at high school. She began in an ad for Burger King, and it was the first of several commercials that featured her in her teens.

Shue showed she had a combination of brains and beauty when she won a place at Harvard University. But she had to drop out while still in her senior year because it was difficult to maintain both university and acting. Yet when she made the decision to quit school, she was only a handful of credits away from graduating.

The actress explained the problem to the Deseret News newspaper in 1988. She said, “The only problem with taking time off from school to make a movie is the break in continuity of my studies. It’s kind of chopped up. I’ve been going to college for six years now.” In the end, something had to give.

It wasn’t as straightforward as just dropping college, though. Her dad and grandpa had Harvard degrees, you see, and education was vital in her family. But the lure of a Hollywood career was also strong for Shue, and she decided that she couldn’t pass up the success that she was beginning to have.

Yet Shue would go back to school in 2000 and ended up graduating in political science. She told the Movie Hole website that she had been at Harvard at the same time as Natalie Portman. But despite seeing the actress around and about, she wasn’t too starstruck and didn’t introduce herself.

Even though it had taken an age for Shue to get her degree, she wasn’t sure she’d stop there. She told Movie Hole, “I really still have a fantasy of getting my masters, maybe in a different subject that I would be interested in teaching one day.” But she would not be making a career change to politics.

So why had Shue taken so long to become a graduate? Well, she had had a flourishing career in movies. And it began in 1984 when she won the part of Ali in The Karate Kid. She was entirely new to the big screen, having just finished a pilot on TV. But the producers saw something they liked, and she became Ralph Macchio’s girlfriend in the film.

A few years later Shue won her first lead, playing a sitter in the comedy Adventures in Babysitting. She was more than keen to try for the role, given that it was a rarity for a 1980s film to have a female lead. She told entertainment website Vulture in 2021, “I really can’t think of any, can you? Everyone was the girlfriend.”

But Shue wasn’t the only woman who’d wanted the role, with rumor having it that Sharon Stone was among those who auditioned. Yet Shue certainly did want it, feeling that she might be forgotten if she stayed at Harvard. There, you see, she’d completed a year after being in “a not great horror movie.”

The star had managed to land a girlfriend part in a Disney film. But next was her audition for Adventures in Babysitting. She told Vulture, “There was zero pressure on me because I didn’t think I was going to get it. You just get used to that feeling of getting, like, one out of ten projects.”

Another good outcome of the role was that Shue dated one of her co-stars. He was Bradley Whitford, who would go on to star in the West Wing. She told Vulture, “I’m not sure if he asked me or I asked him! And it was not immediately after the film ended. But we did go out.”

When Shue’s father found out that she’d be uttering the “f word” in the film, he wasn’t pleased. In fact, he penned her a letter two pages long explaining why she shouldn’t. He felt that she would set a bad example to the young, which was brought home to the actress when she had a toddler of her own, who copied the word.

The star was back to being a girlfriend in 1988. This time it was in Cocktail, and she was Tom Cruise’s love interest. And it was because of Cruise that she took the part. She told Vulture, “My brothers were obsessed with Tom Cruise, and I was so eager to work with him.”

And Shue would end up with a good reason to be a fan of Cruise herself. That’s because the actor saved her bacon when she got a bit too close to the rotor of a helicopter. Camera guy Bill Bennett told the story of the rescue, and Cruise himself confirmed that it really did happen.

Bennett posted about the incident on social media, writing, “The director gave them a couple notes, and Elisabeth, getting quite excited, took off suddenly, running towards the back of the helicopter.” The camera operator yelled at her to “stop,” as she was heading for harm, but she couldn’t hear him.

Incredibly, Cruise also saw the danger. Bennett said, “He lunged after her, but was only able to grab her legs, tackling her to the ground. He rolled her over, dragging her at the same time, and you could see the momentary anger on her face while she was yelling ‘Why did you do that?’” Maybe a thank you was in order, eh readers?

With her career firing on all cylinders, everything looked rosy for Shue. But then tragedy struck. While on holiday with the family, big brother William had an accident and died. The actress described how this changed her outlook to Biography magazine, saying, “What happened to Will taught me that human beings are fragile. His death taught me not to be afraid anymore of who I was.”

The star and her brother Andrew, who himself was a well-known figure after starring in Melrose Place, made a film in 2007 based on what had happened to William. The siblings appeared together in the indy film, Gracie, which was directed by Shue’s partner Davis Guggenheim and co-produced by her other brother, John.

Shue was starring as a girlfriend once again in the late 1980s. This time she was Jennifer Parker, love interest of Marty McFly in Back to the Future Part II and Part III. But she hadn’t been in the original film in 1985. Then Claudia Wells had the part.

Wells, however, didn’t return for the sequels. And it wasn’t because Shue was the bigger actress, now that her star seemed to be rising. It was thanks to Wells needing to opt out to be with her mom, who’d received a cancer diagnosis. In fact, Shue’s career seemed to stumble after the films.

Yet come 1995 Shue would get a lucky break. She scored the lead in Leaving Las Vegas, playing a prostitute who gets entangled with a man with a drinking problem, played by Nicolas Cage. The critics adored her: she’d finally taken on a role that allowed her to show off her acting chops.

The actress would be nominated for an Oscar for the part – the only time that she’s received that honor. From there, she didn’t look back, though, and bagged a string of parts over the course of the late 1990s, including one in a Woody Allen film in 1997. But still, things began to slow down. Why? 

Well, Shue’s marriage to Guggenheim, which had taken place in 1994, had borne fruit in their kids Miles and Stella. Understandably, they had become her focus, and she thought that it now made sense to complete her university studies. It looked for a time that her acting career had come to an end. And so if you haven't seen her around for a while, this may be why.

Shue’s thoughts had turned very much to a teaching career, but a script for an Oprah Winfrey production rekindled her interest in acting. She told The Independent about the film, Amy and Isabelle, in 2005, saying, “I am extremely proud of that film, which no one ever saw, so it’s a good lesson that you do work for yourself and not necessarily for the end result.”

The Cocktail star stuck to abstract films following Gracie, until she turned to the small screen in 2011. Replacing Marg Helgenberger on the hit show CSI was a fine choice. She played Julie Finlay, an investigator with a short fuse, for four years until the show’s end.

Television is something of a home for Shue these days, with her taking the intriguing role of Madelyn Stillwell in 2019’s The Boys. It was a new direction for her, as she told the Boston Globe newspaper that year. She said, “I was interested in why they would think of me for that part because I haven’t played it much in my past.”

Then in September 2021 Shue popped up on Netflix, in Julie Delpy’s series On The Verge. She played one of four friends in Los Angeles, and the show’s clever and witty look at women allowed Shue to show off her acting ability once again. And, it must be said, her youthful looks.

Another TV show also beckoned, as Shue has been cast in the upcoming Showtime series Super Pumped. The first season is all about rideshare giant Uber, and Shue is the mom of its founder Travis Kalanick, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. If we're honest, though, the actress could have probably played Gordon-Levitt’s sister!

So how does Shue look so good at 58? Well, back in 2005, The Independent asked her how she stayed so fresh-faced. She said, “Téa Leoni and I made a pact that we were not going to use any Botox. When we feel weak about Botox or surgery, we’ll call each other for support. Whenever we see each other, we’re like: ‘We’re not going to do it. We’re going down, wrinkles and all!’”

The distinctly unwrinkled Shue also appeared in hit Netflix show Cobra Kai. She had worked with director Dan Trachtenberg on The Boys, and of course he believed she should reprise the role of Ali from The Karate Kid. She told the Entertainment Weekly website, “He told me… it would just be devastating for the fans and for the memory of The Karate Kid if I wasn’t [on the show].”

The website asked her whether fans of Cobra Kai had also pressured her to be on the show. She said, “Yeah, I definitely had a lot of people always asking me whether I was going to be on the show. I’m not really out in the public in that way too much, but yes – every interview I did for The Boys… I definitely got asked the question every single time.”

To Shue’s disappointment, she didn’t smooch with Ralph Macchio this time (like in Karate Kid). Not that she wasn’t keen. She told Entertainment Weekly, “Yeah, I would have been up for a kiss. Are you kidding me? I’m bummed! They could have had a kiss!… I would’ve gone right in there and gotten a great one.”

The fans were doubtlessly shocked that the actress had barely aged since The Karate Kid. And there's a question everyone wants the answer to: what’s her beauty routine? Well, in 2012, she told the WebMD website, “I don’t wear much makeup ever, and that requires some acceptance that I’m not perfect. I do have decent skin. I’m usually in a rush, but I always wear a hat and sunblock when I play tennis.”

And the actress didn’t even have much in the way of fancy products either. She continued, “Also, I always keep mascara in my purse. I use mine until they’re dried up and there’s nothing left, then I go right to Rite Aid for more.” Perhaps her skin stayed young thanks to her diet then?

Shue explained her snacking regimen to WebMD, “When I’m on the set, I always keep a crunchy snack on hand – rice cakes with apple spread or almond butter. I drink lots of water, sometimes with Emergen-C powdered supplements, and I also like Honest Tea.” Whatever she's doing, it’s certainly working!

The actress remained modest when Entertainment Weekly asked her about her age-defying looks, something she shares with co-star Macchio. She responded, “That’s good lighting. That’s a lot of good lighting.” Well, maybe, but we’re beginning to wonder whether Shue has a painting in her attic, like a modern-day Dorian Grey! Speaking of Grey, there’s another curly-haired blond who was on track to be an '80s star like Shue: Jennifer Grey. But she believes one bad decision completely derailed her career.