The transition from teen starlet to serious actress can often be a tough one — but in the case of Eliza Dushku, she actively chose to step out of the spotlight and pursue a totally different career.
Dushku, now 44, is best-known for her role of Faith in the iconic TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer — but these days, she inhabits another world entirely, as an expert in psychedelic therapy. The former actress, who also appeared in movies like Bring It On (2000) and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) during the peak of her Hollywood career, even recently earned a degree in clinical mental health counseling. As celebrity career changes go, it’s pretty out there!
“Graduating with my master’s degree (!!) feels like more than an achievement — it feels like a deep calling realized,” Dushku, 44, wrote via Instagram in June 2025 after receiving the Master of Arts degree from Lesley University. “True growth, energy, and passion — manifested.”
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Dushku has come a long way since she started out in the acting industry at just 9 years old. Discovered by chance when a casting director spotted her taking a tumble in the street in her native Boston, Dushku scored her first role in That Night (1992), alongside Juliette Lewis and Katherine Heigl. A successful acting career followed, often playing the daughter of some seriously huge stars, like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Robert De Niro. But it was in 1998 when, aged 18, she landed that ass-kicking Buffy role, that she became a star in her own right.
It sounds like a dream come true — but, behind the scenes, Dushku was struggling. In 2018, she took to Facebook to accuse True Lies stunt coordinator Joel Kramer of molesting her when she was 12 years old, which he denied. “Hollywood has been very good to me in many ways,” Dushku wrote after going into graphic detail about her recollections. “Nevertheless, Hollywood also failed to protect me, a child actress. I like to think of myself as a tough Boston chick, in many ways I suppose not unlike Faith, Missy, or Echo. Through the years, brave fans have regularly shared with me how some of my characters have given them the conviction to stand up to their abusers. Now it is you who give me strength and conviction. I hope that speaking out will help other victims and protect against future abuse.”
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Dushku’s decision to share her secret — and, in doing so, become one of the most high-profile voices of the Me Too movement — came after a long, challenging period. She struggled with addiction as a teenager and went sober in 2009. After keeping her substance abuse issues private for many years, in 2017, she spoke at the New Hampshire Youth Summit on Opioid Awareness. “I’m an alcoholic,” she said after spontaneously taking the stage. “I was a drug addict for a lot of years.” Dushku went on to reveal that she started taking drugs at 14 and quit at 28 after her brother wouldn’t leave her alone with her niece.
And there were more revelations to come: later in 2018, Dushku wrote a piece for the Boston Globe revealing that she was fired and paid off $9.5 million by CBS after accusing Michael Weatherly, her costar on Bull, of making sexually inappropriate comments. “No judge, no jury, and no chance of finding out what really happened (or so they hoped),” she wrote.
Weatherly responded via a written apology to the New York Times. “During the course of taping our show, I made some jokes mocking some lines in the script,” he said. “When Eliza told me that she wasn’t comfortable with my language and attempt at humor, I was mortified to have offended her and immediately apologized. After reflecting on this further, I better understand that what I said was both not funny and not appropriate and I am sorry and regret the pain this caused Eliza.”
Dushku’s bombshell saw her successfully testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee to end forced arbitration. “It was called one of the most important labor laws of the past 100 years,” she told Boston magazine. “I wouldn’t have been able to do all of that without this psychedelic-assisted therapy and healing that showed me that I was safe in my body and in my life, naming and telling the truth about things. And it’s all kind of catapulted from there.”
It was speaking out — and, in doing so, reliving her childhood trauma — that first made Dushku realize the power of psychedelics. “I found myself feeling so wholly unwell,” she told Boston. “So painfully vulnerable, raw, exposed — terrified and suffering from what was diagnosed as PTSD. I finally surrendered and began to feel a release and a sense of peace and security and calm whooshing through me.”
Retired Actress Eliza Dushku Graduates With Master’s Degree in Counseling
The whole experience was so transformative for Dushku that she was inspired to qualify in psychedelic-assisted therapy alongside her Master’s in counselling and clinical mental health. Her work centers on administering psychedelics like MDMA, psilocybin, LSD, and ketamine in medically supervised settings combined with psychotherapy, to treat trauma, PTSD, addiction, depression and anxiety.
Her husband, real estate developer Peter Palandjian, works with her to fund research and clinical trials, as well as campaigning to legalize access to regulated therapeutic use of psychedelics.
“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. “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.”
In 2019, she spoke to Time about how speaking out against Hollywood and changing her life didn’t necessarily mean her acting career was over for good. “I need the distance to recalibrate and start a family,” she said. “But I don’t want people to think coming forward means ending your career. I could be acting. I could be in L.A. I just need to be here right now.”
Here was, of course, her native Boston — the city she’d always loved, and that she could now, with her indefinite pause from acting, base herself in permanently after first moving back in 2014. “Every time I came back to Boston, there was just a little bit of a feeling of more authenticity,” she said.
In a 2019 interview with Boston magazine, she elaborated. “I’d say I’m a full-time Bostonian yet again, and I’m really happy about it,” she said. “L.A. was good to me for a lot of years, but to this day I still can’t believe I lived there for 18 years — that’s an honest effort. But I always considered myself a Boston girl through and through, and I always planned to come back.”
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Boston is also where she fell for Palandjian, a Harvard graduate and former pro tennis player who she met via her personal trainer. Dushku said in 2024 that their relationship “took off like a rocket”, adding “It was pretty clear and instantaneous.” The pair got married in 2018 and share two boys: Philip, born in 2019, and Bodan, born in 2021.
Now, she’s grateful for the support her family has given her after she essentially blew up her life, starting over to do something that felt more meaningful than the entertainment industry. “To my family, friends — new and old — my colleagues/classmates, professors/teachers, and community, I give thanks,” she wrote on Instagram in June 2025. “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. Today, I stand grounded and ready to support others on their journeys of becoming — through self-discovery, healing, and transformation. The connectedness I feel in holding safe, compassionate space for those who seek the undertaking is such lifeblood now.”
Perhaps Dushku will act again, but for now she’s focused on changing lives, just like she changed her own. “I always felt like I wanted to learn something that I could use to help other people,” she said in 2019. “I’ve got to say that I freakin’ love it. And don’t get me wrong — there are amazing things about being an actor and doing red carpets and getting to go on Jimmy Kimmel, but this stuff gets me going.”
Us Weekly
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