“El-Eye-Shuh Cooth-bert?” I thought while pressing a button for the fifth floor, bewildered by the fact that, even with a solid five-year education from a four-year university and an extremely diverse knowledge of pop culture, I couldn’t figure out how to say Ms. Cuthbert’s name. Her handle had always been one that was easy for me to read, but it was also one that I had always passed on saying out loud, for fear of pronunciated failure. Honestly, the situation shouldn’t have been so damn tough. After all, as far as simple spelling goes, we practically shared the same name, Elisha and Elijah.

Walking through the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel, an establishment far too rich for my PB&J blood, I started to stress a bit like George Costanza, panicking over the superfluous name game at a time when I really had no right. After searching around for the right room and waiting for a few moments in another, someone then led me into a longish area of bright light and beauty. Suddenly, before I even had a chance to de-George myself, I was sitting face to face with the white-clad Elisha Cuthbert, a living image made famous from her near legendary turns in 24, The Girl Next Door, House of Wax and a whole lot more.

“Hi, I’m Elijah,” I said while minimally introducing myself in an attempt to get her to say her name, something else I had acquired from years of Seinfeld.

“I’m Elisha (el-ee-shuh)!” she said in return, calming me immediately as her introduction cleared away all of my confusion. “Wow, we have the same name!”

“Well,” I thought while setting up my black lappie onto the coffee table sitting in front of us, “thank God for Seinfeld.”

“Oooooo, your computer’s black!” she said, commenting on my Macbook as she crossed her legs onto the couch.

“Yeah, it’s new,” I shot back, trying my damnedest to impress. “It’s new AND improved. Plus, it’s black.”

“But I have Macbook and an iBook and one’s all white and one’s a titanium silver-ish color.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. In reality, I knew what I wanted to tell her, but I was afraid it would offend her. So, I held back my “once you go black, you never come back” line so that the interview wouldn’t have been cut off right then and there. Of course, there really wasn’t too much reason to worry about offending someone whose most notorious role thus far had been that of a hot young porn star in The Girl Next Door. That worry slipped even further away when I remembered that her upcoming role in The Quiet was about five times more extreme and ten times more uncomfortable. To say the least, her new movie is pretty dark, even for someone whose big break came from a small part on Are You Afraid of the Dark?.

“Am I going to lose all my guy fans?” she hesitantly asked as we talked about the film. And she had good reason to throw such a bone my way too. After all, The Quiet isn’t exactly a carbon copy of anything else she’s done. In fact, it’s probably the furthest thing from it. Depressing, hollow, edgy and disheartening are just a few of the words that could be used to describe this harsh new tale of incest, abuse, lies, corruption, murder and mutes.

“I’m pretty sure you won’t,” I shot back, unsure of whether I was lying through my teeth or not. “Are you afraid that you will?”

“I think they’re smart enough to get that it’s important to try to change it up and make movies that are different,” she said, I really respect the people that have followed me over the last couple of years and I feel like I have gotten sort of a big fan base in other genres. But I feel like this is so far away from those kinds of films that I’m afraid they maybe won’t understand it.”

Elisha’s fears are not completely without any credence either. The Quiet is not a light-hearted romp by any stretch of the imagination. It is not a happy movie in which a person will leave feeling in the mood for an ice cream sundae. Even if you walk into the theater in the beginning of the day to see this film, the sun will be gone by the time you walk out, no matter what time it is.

“In comparison to your other work,” I asked, “what was the most difficult thing about this role?”

“Playing a character being victimized by her father and being sexually abused, it was mentally draining because I wanted to fight back and stand up and play her not as the victim, but as this character who doesn’t know any different. This is her life. I found myself running off the set a couple times, back to the trailer and just fricking bawling my eyes out because I couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t get my head around it and it was so hurtful and so emotional.”

Regardless of the darker and often disturbing areas The Quiet trudges into, Elisha indeed stands out. No longer will she simply be that hot young face who swooned Luke Wilson into bed in Old School. It almost seems as if she’s all grown up.

“I think it’s going to stand out, hopefully because people will walk away from it saying, ‘Wow, she’s a real actress now.’ I tried to show that in House of Wax, The Girl Next Door and 24, but I guess because of the context and the lighter subject matter of what I’ve done, it didn’t come across? I don’t know. It’s hard for me because I’m the one doing it. All I knew is that I was getting the urge to test my boundaries and do something that was a little bit more off beat.”

“You don’t want to be ‘The Girl Next Door’ forever,” I replied.

“No. I’m not saying that I’ll never play another beautiful character again. I think all of these women that I have portrayed have been beautiful in their own way and true to the script, but The Girl Next Door just happened to be a bit more extraordinary. I don’t know if I’ll be able to recreate that again, but I’m looking for something in that vain right now.”

And to be perfectly honest, after her brow-furrowing turn in The Quiet, who could ever blame her? Not me, although if I wanted to, at least I’d know how to pronounce her name.

The Quiet opens in limited release August 25.