Shannon Elizabeth turned her back on stardom and has pursued her passion for helping animals, selling her LA home to finance a wildlife sanctuary in South Africa
09:41, 24 Mar 2026Updated 10:14, 24 Mar 2026
The star has turned her back on Hollywood(Image: Getty Images for GBK Brand Bar)
As sultry Czech foreign exchange student Nadia in the American Pie movies, Shannon Elizabeth was one of the standout stars of the original American Pie movie’s cast, and she was called back two years later for the hit film’s sequel.
But while other members of the franchise’s ensemble cast – such as Seann William Scott, Mena Suvari and Natasha Lyonne – have gone on to enjoy lengthy Hollywood careers, Shannon had less of an appetite for stardom. Over the past few years she has steadily scaled back her film career in favour of a new life spent protecting African wildlife.
Shannon left Hollywood for South Africa a decade ago, selling her Los Angeles home for $2.8 million (a little over £2million). In exchange she bought a 2,300-acre patch of land in South Africa that she uses to safeguard rhinos and other endangered animals.
“We’re building a sanctuary,” she said at the Steel City Con in Pittsburgh. “We have a blind black rhino we’ve been taking care of, and we’re going to bring in more rhinos as soon as we can do an expansion.”
She explained: “I went on a journey of figuring out what that was and realised there was this hectic poaching crisis going on in other parts of the world.”
Shannon also popped up in a third American Pie movie in 2012(Image: Handout)
On a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, Shannon said she’s nothing like the sex symbol role that launched her to fame: ”For me it was a role, it was playing a character,” she said. “But even in my real life I’m just not the girl that likes to be naked, ever.
“Even at home I’m always covered up. Like I have friends that sleep in the nude and they don’t mind walking around that way. That was never me, but because that was kind of my coming out everyone assumed I was that girl.”
While Shannon has stepped back from mainstream Hollywood, she has continued to take occasional roles in smaller, independent projects, including the successful indie romcom Plan B.
Shannon relocated to South Africa to pursue her passion for helping animals(Image: Daily Mirror)
While Shannon built a considerable fortune through her film work – appearing in Scary Movie, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and even popping up in perennial Christmas favourite Love Actually – she says that living on her animal sanctuary involves an awful lot of improvisation. The star and her husband Simon Borchert make things for themselves rather than relying on ready-made products.
“One of the things that I realised was that you don’t have everything at your fingertips here,” she said.
“There isn’t an active Amazon here that you could just order whatever you want. I became like MacGyver for things.”
Shannon, whose current net worth is estimated at around $5million (roughly £3.75m) was also a major player on the professional poker circuit, with winnings in the region of $250,000. She appeared on Dancing With the Stars, America’s answer to Strictly Come Dancing, in 2008
The Texas-born star, now 52, said that she had originally started a charity called Animal Avengers soon after shooting to fame with American Pie. But over time, she says, its changed and expanded its focus: “It’s just morphed over the years into conservation and wildlife from dogs and cats.”