Cobra Kai and The Big Bang Theory Star Courtney Henggeler Says She Lives ‘Like a Hermit’ After Leaving Hollywood
Henggeler announced in March that she was retiring from acting
By Victoria Edel
Published on June 30, 2025 04:14PM EDT
[IMG2=JSON]{“data-align”:“none”,“data-size”:“full”,“src”:“https://people.com/thmb/HJq38kEXVMjFoHvL4jdfrrJ9n9c=/1500x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2)/Courtney-Henggeler-0-063025-5b0effa93da748d9b330b331cb52c83b.jpg”}[/IMG2] Courtney Henggeler in ‘Cobra Kai’ in 2024 (left); Courtney Henggeler in ‘The Big Bang Theory’ in 2018 (right).Credit :
Curtis Bonds Baker/Netflix; Michael Yarish/CBS via Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- Courtney Henggeler, best known for playing Missy Cooper on [I]The Big Bang Theory[/I] and Amanda LaRusso on [I]Cobra Kai[/I], announced in March that she was retiring from acting
- During a new interview, she explained she’s now living "like a hermit" in Connecticut and staying away from social media
- Henggeler wrote in her retirement announcement that she "no longer wanted to be a cog in the wheel of the machine"
Courtney Henggeler is opening up about life outside of Hollywood.
Henggeler, 46, is best known for her role as Amanda LaRusso in Cobra Kai. She also had a guest role on The Big Bang Theory as Missy Cooper, the twin sister of Jim Parsons’ Sheldon Cooper. In March, Henggeler announced her retirement from acting.
Henggeler appeared on the June 30 episode of The Official Big Bang Theory Podcast to talk about her first appearance on the series, in season 1’s “The Pork Chop Indeterminacy.” The actress told host Jessica Radloff that she was nervous about talking about her time on the show, since it was so brief.
“I realized for all these years, I just felt like a fraud, sort of, because I only did this one episode,” she said, adding that she did appear in a second episode, years later, when Sheldon got married. “I feel like because I was a main character’s twin sister, people thought I was in the show more than I was,” she added.
[IMG2=JSON]{“data-align”:“none”,“data-size”:“full”,“src”:“https://people.com/thmb/At4dUQHd3qvamW8g0DgYV_VyZJ8=/4000x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2)/Courtney-Henggeler-and-Ralph-Macchio-in-Cobra-Kai-063025-dcc05d279cc04ffcaa40b1dcebc1d4d7.jpg”}[/IMG2] Courtney Henggeler (left) and Ralph Macchio in ‘Cobra Kai’ in 2024.
Courtesy of Netflix
“What a wonderful thing to be part of and what a wonderful thing to be associated with,” she said of people recognizing her from the show. “But I was just like, but not in any real major way.” Radloff said she was “memorable and great” in the episode, and they both noted that Missy became a main character in the prequel series Young Sheldon, played by Raegan Revord.
Henggeler said that when fans recognize her, they called her either Sheldon’s sister or Daniel LaRusso’s wife, referencing her Cobra Kai character Amanda, who’s married to Ralph Macchio’s Daniel. She said she’s happy to be attached to two “super very iconic shows.”
Radloff asked Henggeler what else she’s up to lately, and she gave a look into her life outside of Hollywood. [IMG2=JSON]{“data-align”:“none”,“data-size”:“full”,“src”:“https://people.com/thmb/RXvcue1q1p2nfjdTx0l6oA_7aZI=/4000x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(599x0:601x2)/Courtney-Henggeler-cobra-kai-premiere-063025-21bf8270b45e4b839acb2ee0774dd7e2.jpg”}[/IMG2] Courtney Henggeler in February.
Maya Dehlin Spach/WireImage
“I took myself off all the socials. So I’m like a hermit,” she explained. “I bought a house in Connecticut. So now I live like a hermit in Connecticut. So you can’t know anything. I’m very secretive.”
Henggeler called Connecticut “beautiful” and “breathtaking” and called her home “the house that Cobra Kai built.” She added, “Thank God for that show because I would not be living my Connecticut dream if not.”
As for the online world, she said, “I don’t mess with social media anymore. I think I’m a happier person because of it. But I also don’t know what’s going on in the world. I feel very deaf to things right now.” She joked, “So you can’t follow me. But if you can find where I live in Connecticut, can like look in my windows, I guess.”
In March 2025, Henggeler shared her retirement news in a post on her Substack. “After 20-plus 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,” she wrote in part.
She continued, “When prompted to know what I did want to do, I simply replied, ‘I want to be the machine.’ " Henggeler said she was tired of the “hustle” and “grind” that was “sprinkled” with “the odd acting job.”
“For years, I silenced the voice in my head, begging me to walk away. The voice, the constant gnawing,” she said. “Not because of the acting itself. But because of the gauntlet I had to run to reach the acting. What once felt necessary, something I willingly participated, even celebrated, became stifling.”
Henggeler’s acting credits include movies like 2011’s Friends with Benefitsand 2023’s The Boys in the Boat. She also had small roles on shows like House, Jane the Virgin, Henry Danger, Royal Pains, Mom, NCIS and Criminal Minds.
I really liked her in Cobra Kai.
