Elisha Cuthbert posed for the cover of last month's Maxim magazine in a skin-tight, cleavage-popping, tummy-baring, see-through, white cotton undershirt. It was her second appearance on the cover of the popular men's magazine.

‘‘We first put her on the cover in October 2002, and the reader response was so overwhelming that we immediately made plans to get her back on a cover,’’ says Eric Alt, Maxim's entertainment editor.

‘‘She is so mind-numbingly gorgeous on the latest cover that we have had many readers tell us that she literally brought them to their knees.’’

And, yet, some idiot at the studio didn't think she was sexy enough to play an attractive porn star who moves into a suburban home next door to a flustered but utterly thrilled teenage boy in the comedy ‘‘The Girl Next Door,’’ which opens Friday.

‘That's the truth,’’ says the film's director Luke Greenfield. ‘‘The studio people had seen her in ‘24’ (she plays Kiefer Sutherland's troublesome daughter Kim) and didn't think she was that sexy.

‘‘Frankly, I hadn't even seen ‘24’ when I tested her for this role, but I saw plenty of sex appeal. The studio made us test hundreds of other actresses for the role anyway, including some pretty big names that I'm not going to mention here, but she blew them all away.

‘‘We knew she would,’’ he adds. ‘‘We knew she was the one from the beginning.’’

The 21-year-old Cuthbert, munching delicately on a lunch of raw tuna and corn tortillas at a favorite beachside bistro near her Venice, Calif., home, is flattered that everybody thinks she's so sexy, but insists that she is more than a hot body and a pretty face. And she's not alone in that assessment.

‘‘Oh, she's much more than a pretty face,’’ her director says. ‘‘She is one of the sharpest and coolest girls I've ever met. Real smart and
complicated. As an actress, she's a chameleon. She can be the girl next door one minute and Angelina Jolie the next.’’

Cuthbert said she is enjoying all the attention that a Maxim cover and the role as a porn star brings, but she does not want to be defined as a sex symbol.

‘‘I'm looking for longevity, and you don't get longevity in this business playing on your looks or sex appeal.’’

To that end, the Canadian-born actress already has signed to star in the Joel Silver-produced horror flick ‘‘House of Wax,’’ which begins filming in Australia on May 5. As soon as she returns after the two-month shoot, she reports immediately for the fourth season of ‘‘24.’’

‘‘No time off for me this year,’’ she says with a laugh. ‘‘There's time to rest later.’’

Last year was no easier. Besides the TV show, she had small roles in the films ‘‘Old School’’ and ‘‘Love Actually.’’ After those assignments, she said she was ready to tackle a leading role in a major studio film.

‘‘You hear the words ‘porn star’ and it makes you wonder. So I sent a copy of the script to my mom (back in Montreal) and she loved it. She told me to go for it.’’

In the film, which is reminiscent of Tom Cruise's breakthrough movie ‘‘Risky Business,’’ Cuthbert plays an adult film star who wants to get out of the business and lead a normal life. She befriends the high school boy next door — after she catches him watching her from his bedroom
window — and a romance ensues.

‘‘Of course, everybody wants to know what kind of research I did for the role,’’ she says, smiling. ‘‘As a matter of fact, I got to spend four days talking to two adult film stars who were on the set to film a scene for the
movie.

‘‘The key to the film for me was to find out what these women were like when they weren't shooting these adult films. I wanted to know if they were always ‘on,’ if they always looked like that and if they always dressed like that.

‘‘What I discovered was that these women are strong and tough. And they are much different in their real lives than in their work. That was the challenge of this role — to strike this weird balance between being this cool, strong woman in real life and then looking like a slut when I'm working.’’

Up north, eh?
The oldest of three children, Elisha Cuthbert was born in Calgary, moved with her family to Vancouver six months later and then settled in Montreal where she attended high school and actively pursued an acting career.

At 7, she was a foot model for clothing catalogues but began acting professionally at 10. Later, she starred on two TV series — Nickelodeon's ‘‘Are You Afraid of the Dark?’’ and ‘‘Popular Mechanics for Kids’’ — as well as several TV movies.

Upon high school graduation, she announced that she was moving to Los Angeles, which did not sit well with her parents.

‘‘They knew I was serious about acting because I had given up my entire summer vacation the year before to film a movie, but they were not happy about me moving alone to L.A.

‘‘I told them that I would give myself six months. If nothing came of it in that time, I would come home and go to college. I thought that was a very mature attitude. Still, it took five months of bugging them.’’

Her parents reluctantly agreed, and the aspiring actress found a one-bedroom apartment near the studios in Burbank. With her agent's help, she went out on 23 auditions. And got 23 rejections.

The week before she was set to pack up her belongings and return home, she got the role on ‘‘24.’’ It was her 24th audition.

‘‘I swear to god,’’ she says, holding up her hand as if to swear in a court of law. ‘‘It's not a made-up Hollywood story. It was my 24th audition.’’

The TV series helped her get her green card, a new house and an SUV. With or without the series, she got herself a new boyfriend, who is not an actor. He threw her a surprise 2lst birthday party at a Hollywood nightclub. Her cake was decorated like a California drivers license.

‘‘My friends all came, but the paparazzi wasn't there,’’ she says. ‘‘Nobody recognizes me, even when I go to clubs. I guess I should feel lucky.’’

That might change, particularly if this new movie does well, and Cuthbert says she's ready for whatever awaits her. ‘‘I'm not in this for the money or the fame,’’ she says. ‘‘I'm in this to be a working actress. And I'm certainly not in this to be a sex symbol. I know my career could go in that direction after the Maxim cover and this role, but I believe in my heart that it's going to go in an entirely different direction.

‘‘If studios won't give me a chance to do anything other than sexy roles, then I'll just have to make them.’’