Cobra Kai star Courtney Henggeler quits acting after 20 years in the business, saying: ‘We survived off the crumbs.

For years, I silenced the voice in my head, urging me to walk away. The voice, the constant gnawing,” she wrote in a lengthy post on Substack.

“Cobra Kai star Courtney Henggeler is stepping away from acting.

‘After over 20 years of fighting the good fight in the acting business, I hung up my gloves on Friday. I called my agents and told them I was tapping out. I no longer wanted to be a cog in the wheel of the machine,’ Henggeler wrote in a lengthy post on her Substack account, which she shared on her official Instagram.

Though she didn’t specify her next steps, she did share that she told her agents, ‘I want to be the machine’ instead. She continued, ‘All I’ve ever known in my professional life was acting. But not even the art or craft of acting. All I’ve truly ever known was the hustle. The hustle, the grind, occasionally sprinkled with the odd acting job. Perhaps a line or two to TV’s Dr. House – ‘Sorry’ (that’s it. That was my line. Genius). Nailed it. Or a recurring guest-star role that never quite recurred… Whatever the opposite of nailing it is.'”

“Though she is best known for playing Amanda LaRusso in all six seasons of Cobra Kai, Henggeler had small roles in Jane the Virgin, Working Class, Bones, Henry Danger, Royal Pains, Mom, NCIS, Criminal Minds, and The Big Bang Theory before that. On the film side, she also appeared in Friends with Benefits, Nobody’s Fool, and Feed.

But ultimately, after each job, Henggeler found herself going ‘back to the grind,’ which left her feeling unsatisfied. ‘We survived off the crumbs. We filled our cup with 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.”

“Henggeler’s announcement came shortly after Netflix’s decision to end Cobra Kai with its sixth and final season, which debuted on the streaming platform in February.

With the success and steady work coming from Cobra Kai, Henggeler knew she had finally become ‘one of the lucky ones,’ but she still found herself ‘famished’ by it all. ‘I was on a series. A successful series. I made money. My face was on the billboards I had longed for over 20 years. I was directed by George Clooney, for god’s sake. This, by all definitions, is the golden goose,’ she shared.

Henggeler continued, ‘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 get to the acting. What once felt necessary, something I willingly participated in, even celebrated, became stifling.'”

“She concluded her post with a series of rhetorical questions that suggested she had found peace with her decision to step away from acting: ‘What if we choose to believe we have the power? What if we’ve had it all along? … What if we never needed to run the gauntlet? What if we are the gauntlet?’

A representative for Henggeler did not immediately respond to Entertainment Weekly’s request for additional comment on Monday.”