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LOS ANGELES, May 7 (UPI) -- Jennifer Love Hewitt will depart Criminal Minds. The 36-year-old actress debuted as FBI agent Kate Callahan in season 10, and will not return for season 11. The pregnant character handed in her resignation on the season finale Wednesday, saying she intends to spend more time with her children.
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Hewitt is pregnant in real life with her second child by husband Brian Hallisay, and Criminal Minds showrunner Erica Messer told Entertainment Weekly the star left the program for similar reasons as Callahan.
"There was an opportunity there to write towards the truth," she shared. "Jennifer wanted to be able to give this second baby everything she gave her first, and that's taking time off to be a full-time mom ... We wrote to that, and that's how season 10 ends."
"It's a bittersweet idea of 'life is full of choices and they define who you are,'" she related. "She makes the decision to leave the team for a while. It's really lovely and real, not only because it was happening off-screen, but because I know those things happen in real life, too."
Messer told the website Callahan's story will be left open for Hewitt to potentially return in season 12. The showrunner said the team will turn its focus to new ideas and characters, and perhaps bring back a former actor to guest star.
Criminal Minds premiered in 2005, and stars Mandy Patinkin, Thomas Gibson and A.J. Cook. Hewitt and Hallisay met on the set of Lifetime television movie The Client List, and secretly married ahead of daughter Autumn's birth in November 2013.
