“For years I silenced the voice in my head, begging me to walk away. The voice, the constant gnawing. Not because of the acting itself. But because of the gauntlet I had to run to reach the acting,” says the actress, deciding that enough was enough.
Courtney Henggeler may not be a household name, but she’s built a solid career after two decades, and even found a new generation of fans with her starring role as Amanda LaRusso on Cobra Kai. But she’s still decided to walk away.
In a Substack posted late last month that’s just starting to make the media rounds now, the actress said she’d made the decision and “hung up my gloves” on Friday, March 28 after more than two decades in the business.
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“I called my agents and told them I was tapping out,” she wrote. “I no longer wanted to be a cog in the wheel of the machine.”
This despite having just come off of the biggest role yet of her career as one of the leads in a popular series that ran for six seasons. She even admitted that with this role, she was considered in the industry “one of the lucky ones.”
“I was on a series. A successful series. I made money. My face was on the billboards I longed for 20 plus years,” she wrote. “I was directed by George Clooney for godsakes. This by all definitions is the golden goose.”
And yet, now what?
She wrote that her entire professional life has been acting, before immediately correcting herself.
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“But not even the art or craft of acting,” she wrote. “All I’ve truly ever knew was the hustle. The hustle, the grind, sprinkled occasionally with the odd acting job. Perhaps a line or two to TV’s Dr. House – ‘Sorry’ (that’s it. That was my line. Genius).”
She talked about chasing the “recurring guest-star that never seemed to recur….” and that no matter how high or low the success, be it a single line or a starring role, “when all was said and done (or mimed. Sometimes, you gotta mime) it was back to the grind. Back to the wheel. Back to the machine.”
The Big Bang Theory actress, known for her role as Sheldon’s twin Missy, wrote about how the highs and lows always seemed to again become the lows: “We survived off the crumbs. We filled our cup with the possibility; our mugs with delusion.”
“Our plates were empty, but a golden goose hung over our heads. Today might be the day. Today might be the day I reach the golden goose,” she wrote. “20 plus years of this.”
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She wrote that for years she “silenced the voice in my head, begging me to walk away. The voice, the constant gnawing. Not because of the acting itself. But because of the gauntlet I had to run to reach the acting.”
“What once felt necessary, something I willingly participated, even celebrated, became stifling,” she added.
When asked by her agency what she did want to do if she no longer wanted to be “a cog in the wheel of the machine,” as she’d put it, Henggeler told them, “I want to be the machine.”
And so she proposed a different perspective, a different way of looking at the machine — or maybe building a whole new machine.
“What if we choose to believe we have the power? What if we had it all along?” she posits. “What if we have been handing our power away because we have been told that this is how it is done. We lose perspective on our own machine, because we are convinced we need another.”
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“We wait for power to be bestowed upon us. We sign up for the gauntlets. We run the gauntlet, to prove our worth. To earn our place. To be crowned the power,” she mused.
“What if we never needed to run the gauntlet?” she concluded her thoughts. “What if we are the gauntlet?”
Henggeler’s decision comes after her most substantial career role yet, starring as the wife of the series lead in Netflix’s Karate Kid spinoff from May 2018 until February 2025 (the series aired on YouTube Red/YouTube Premium for its first two seasons).
With that series ending, she was presumably look at sliding back into the “hustle.” Historically, there is no guarantee that someone coming out of a big TV series is guaranteed any greater chance of future success, or even big roles.
Henggeler had previously enjoyed steady work in both television and film since her first lead role in the 2003 B-horror movie The Bog Creatures. She would go on to appear in more than a dozen films, and made guest and recurring appearances in shows including House, The Big Bang Theory, Criminal Minds, NCIS, Mom, Bones, Jane the Virgin, and Fuller House.
The Karate Kid universe is set to continue with the release of Karate Kid: Legends on May 30, 2025. Starring Ralph Macchio again as Daniel LaRusso, alongside Jackie Chan, Joshua Jackson, Ming-Na Wen and others, it is unclear if his wife Amanda, played by Henggeler on Cobra Kai, will appear.
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