Confirming rumours that have been circulating since last season’s cliffhanger finale, original cast member Jorja Fox has announced she is leaving TV’s No. 1 show, “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”

The 39-year-old actress cited her desire for a break from the commitments of filming a weekly television series for her departure from the hit forensics drama.

“There are all these things I want to do. Some are personal. Some are professional. And I really need to do some of them before I get too old,” Fox told Entertainment Weekly magazine, in a short piece posted to its website

“If I thought the show were on its last legs, I would have tried harder to stay the course. But I feel like its going to be around for a while, so if I don’t want some of those dreams to pass me by, I have to get off the ride for a while.”

Fox has reportedly wrapped filming on her final scenes as crime scene investigator Sara Sidle, with her last episode for the Las Vegas-set CBS series scheduled to air in November.

Fox has been a cast member of “CSI” since its debut in 2000, with her character introduced in the second episode

Rumours of her departure from the show began after “CSI”’s seventh season finale, in which her character was kidnapped by a serial killer and left for dead in the desert. However, she had since returned in the first few episodes of the eighth season.

Amid the rumours, Fox’s fans had launched a “Save Jorja” campaign and sent messages to the show’s production offices.

She and co-star George Eads parted from the show briefly in 2004, when the two were fired and rehired about a week later amid what was rumoured to be contract disputes.

A former model born to Canadian parents, the actress has become a familiar face on television, having completed runs on medical drama “ER” and the now-defunct White House series “The West Wing” before “CSI”.