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Elisha Cuthbert is one of Canada's hot young talents.

Born in Calgary and raised in Vancouver, Elisha began her career at the age of seven as a model. Soon after, when cast as an extra on the set of Nickelodeon's Are You Afraid of the Dark?, she caught the acting bug and was delighted to be invited back to the show as a series regular.

Elisha has been racking up an impressive list of film and television credits while still finding time to trot around the globe as a correspondent for the award-winning series Popular Mechanics For Kids. Fans are already creating numerous unofficial web sites in her name.

It was while working on Popular Mechanics that Elisha caught the eye of former First Lady Hillary Clinton and was invited to Washington for a tête-a-tête with the White House's watchdog of children's television and entertainment.

In addition to her two television series, Elisha has had starring roles in Showtime's Time At The Top opposite Timothy Busfield, Disney's Mail To The Chief with Randy Quaid, Airspeed with Joe Mantegna and the recently-completed the film, Believe alongside Ben Gazzara and Andrea Martin.

In summer 2000, while attending Montreal's renowned Just For Laughs International Comedy Festival, Elisha met with heads of casting from several major American networks and studios, which led to her signing a talent deal with the Fox Network.

In her spare time Elisha is a painter. It is a "way to let things out, and I am creating something for myself. It's almost a communication." And she admits to liking to be by herself. While being good with people she also needs quiet time, like when she listens to music. "It's important to figure out who you are."

Elisha currently resides Los Angeles, yet with her family and friends in Montreal, she loved being back in Canada to shoot Lucky Girl.

(article from http://www.allianceatlantis.com/test/lucky_girl/cast_cuthbert.html)

How long does it take to turn a fresh-faced A-student with a passion for shopping and backpacking across Europe into a deranged, thieving liar with an insatiable gambling addiction? 

About as much time as it takes to get to the first commercial break in Lucky Girl, tonight's CTV Signature film starring Montrealer Elisha Cuthbert, the sprightly, wholesome host of Popular Mechanics for Kids as a high-school senior on a dangerous roll. 

From then on, it's just a matter of watching 17-year-old Katlin spiral deeper and deeper into the abyss of high-stakes sports betting, Internet gambling and after-hours blackjack in an underground casino in a seedy motel. 

A composite drama, based on interviews and research studies, Lucky Girl is about a serious issue, and CTV has billed it it as an opportunity for parents to talk to their kids about the inherent risks in risk-taking. Cuthbert, now in Hollywood working on a pilot for 24, in which she plays opposite Kiefer Sutherland, does a credible job as the teenager over her head and out of control. 

Yet the script never grapples with any of the reasons why Katlin does what she does - what's the difference, for instance, between her playing computer roulette and her father's hedge-fund stock trading? Nothing explains where high-school students find the money to drop hundred of bucks on a football pool. Just about everybody in Lucky Girl is an enabler, from the flaky teenager who sets up her gambler brother with a girl who already can't cover half her debts, to Katlin's mother (Sherry Miller), who repeatedly hides her suspicions - and her daughter's credit card balance - from her husband. 

By the time Katlin finally meets up with the loan sharks, played for comic relief like Valium-poopping nerds from a parallel universe, what started out as paint-by-numbers morality play is about as subtle and illuminating as a teenage slasher flick.