Video reveals big noughties star’s ‘new life’

A rising actress of the 90s and noughties who starred in Buffy and Bring It On has now started a “new life” outside of Hollywood.

Former actress Eliza Dushku may have retired from acting, but she’s been keeping busy.

The Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Bring It On star shared some exciting news with her followers on Instagram today – she’s just earned her master’s degree, obtaining a Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counselling.

Dushku, 44, shared a sweet video of herself on stage in her cap and gown for her graduation ceremony, blowing cameras a kiss as she celebrated the achievement, along with other graduating students from Lesley University, Massachusetts.

Dushku explained that the master’s came “after nearly a decade of inner work and building a new life”.

Dushku blows the camera a kiss during graduation.

Dushku retired from acting after a TV role turned sour in 2017. Picture: AFP

“Graduating with my master’s degree (!!) feels like more than an achievement — it feels like a deep calling realised. True growth, energy, and passion — manifested,” she wrote.

Dushku said she was grateful to herself “for taking this wild leap away from everything I knew and making it happen”.

She also thanked her family, friends, teachers and fellow students for “rooting me on, encouraging me day in and day out, and affording me the grace, strength, and space to step fully into these past years of clinical training”.

Alongside Kirsten Dunst (left) in the 2000 film Bring It On.

Dushku’s acting career had started when she was just a child in the early 90s, but it wasn’t until her recurring role as Faith in Buffy The Vampire Slayer began in 1998 that her star rose. She also had a starring role in the 2000 cheerleading hit Bring It On, and continued her successful TV career through the noughties with starring roles in the series Tru Calling, Dollhouse and as a voice actor in Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H.

In the 2003 film Wrong Turn.

As Faith in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Dushku last acted in 2017,but it wasn’t until last year that she publicly confirmed she’d long since retired from the profession, opening up about her new passion for working in the field of mental health.

“I had the means to shift directions and choose a course in my life that focused on healing myself so that I could help heal others,” she told Boston Magazine in September 2024.

“I would be remiss if I didn’t now share the transformation and the peace and the passion that I have. This is just absolutely so clearly my real calling, my real purpose.”

Dushku’s final on-screen credit was a three-episode stint on the legal drama Bull, a role that was meant to be ongoing but that Dushku alleged ended prematurely.

She claimed she was hastily written out of the show because she complained about lead actor Michael Weatherley’s inappropriate jokes during filming.

After mediation, Bull’s TV network CBS agreed in January 2019 to pay Dushku $13 million, a settlement calculated based on her potential loss of earnings had she become a regular cast member on the show.

Originally published as Video reveals big noughties star’s ‘new life’