Celebrities who retired young
Charlotte Irwin
06 November 2018
Saying farewell to stardom
There is a saying that you should go out on a high, and for some celebrities a positive legacy is one of the reasons that they decide to leave the limelight when their star is in its prime. For others an early retirement is motivated by other personal reasons. Read on to find out which stars retired early, and what they went on to do...
Greta Garbo
Stockholm-born actress Greta Garbo was notoriously private, and while she was making films in Hollywood she'd often refuse to talk to the press, and never signed autographs. This created an air of mystery around the beauty, which only made her more popular. So, perhaps it was not surprise when Garbo decided to retire from the film industry at the age of 36.
Greta Garbo
Garbo initially announced a temporary retirement, but it ended up lasting 49 years until her death. The actress never married, but spent her retirement collecting art and spending time with friends. She was often snapped by paparazzi walking, such as here when she was taking a stroll with British photographer Cecil Beaton in 1951.
Bill Watterson
Calvin and Hobbes was a cute comic strip about a six-year-old and a his tiger teddy. The cartoonist behind it was Bill Watterson, and his work featured in 2,400 papers across the world. However, Watterson decided to retire – taking the comic strip with him – in 1995.
Bill Watterson
Watterson had grown tired of his cartoon being syndicated and the daily deadlines, and put down his pen never to return. Following his retirement Watterson refused interviews and to give autographs. But he didn't completely leave Calvin and Hobbes behind – he hid signed copies of his books on shelves of local bookstores as a surprise for fans.
Deanna Durbin
Deanna Durbin was a Canadian-born child actress who starred in her first film called Every Sunday in 1936 aged just 15 years old, alongside Judy Garland. However, after 12 years at the top the star decided to stop acting and retire from the limelight at the young age of 27.
Deanna Durbin
Durbin's retirement was fuelled in part by the low quality of her last few films, and her dislike of the Hollywood machine. The birth of her daughter Jessica (pictured) a few years earlier is also thought to have been a reason behind her decision to move to France with her third husband, film director Charles David.
Jeff Cohen
Jeff Cohen is best known for playing "Chunk" in cult classic film The Goonies. While he did star in several other films, the teasing that he received for his size in the role of Chunk led Cohen to take up sport and to lose weight in his teenage years. He then decided to go to university where he studied Business.
Jeff Cohen
Now a lawyer, Cohen founded the firm Cohen & Gardner LLP. But his brush with fame still helps him and he has represented many rich and powerful Hollywood clients.
Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple was the first child star, the one that many are still compared to today. Temple began her career at the early age of three and acted in 50 films until her retirement from film in 1950 at the age of 22. Temple realised that the quality of the films she was starring in had fallen off and so she took a break before some television work such as The Shirley Temple Show in the late 1950s.
Shirley Temple
Soon Temple left showbiz behind, and decided to have a change of career. Temple went on to become a political fundraiser. In 1969 she began a diplomatic career, and went on to become the United States ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia.
Mara Wilson
Mara Wilson shot to fame in the 1996 film, Matilda. She also had starring roles in Mrs Doubtfire and Miracle on 34th Street. However, the child actor gave up a career on the big screen after starring in Thomas and the Magic Railroad in 2000. In a 2012 blog post Wilson explained that one of the main reasons behind her retirement was "film acting is not very fun", while her mother's death after Matilda was made was another factor.
Mara Wilson
Wilson went on to complete a degree at New York University and writes plays, for which she has won awards. In recent years she has done some voice acting in animated comedy BoJack Horseman and Big Hero 6, but apart from a few small parts, Wilson has no plans to return to the big screen full time.
Peter Ostrum
Peter Ostrum only starred in one film, as Charlie in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. While he enjoyed the experience, Ostrum turned down the offer of a three-film contract following his silver screen debut.
Peter Ostrum
In fact, Ostrum, pictured on the right with his former co-stars, went on to become a veterinarian after developing a love of horses. While he has never acted again, he does speak annually to schoolchildren about his role in the chocolate-themed film.
Angus T. Jones
Angus T. Jones was at one time the highest paid child TV actor for his role in Two and a Half Men. Jones started acting at the age of four, with encouragement from his mother, and his first major role was in the 1999 film Simpatico. He was cast as Jake Harper in the sitcom that confirmed his fame in 2003, at 10 years old.
Angus T. Jones
However, after over a decade on the show, Jones announced in 2012 that he wished to leave Two and a Half Men behind. The child star had found religion, and at one point even declared the show "filth". He has since dropped such a harsh stance, and in 2016 took a role behind the scenes working for rapper P. Diddy's son Justin's production and events company, Tonite.
Sir Daniel Day-Lewis
London-born actor Daniel Day-Lewis is the only actor to win the academy award for Best Actor three times, for My Left Foot (1989), There Will Be Blood (2007), and Lincoln (2012). However, following his latest film, Phantom Thread in 2017, Day-Lewis announced his retirement from the acting world.
Sir Daniel Day-Lewis
The notorious method actor has taken several breaks from the world of acting before, notably a five-year period off before his final film Phantom Thread, but he stated that this time it would be permanent. Day-Lewis has not given a reason for this decision, but in an interview said "I haven't figured it out. But it's settled on me, and it's just there...". Day-Lewis may be 61-years-old already, but the jury is out on whether we might see a comeback...
Syd Barrett
In the early days of Pink Floyd, David Gilmour was not the front man, but in fact Syd Barrett, pictured front right. The principal songwriter for the group came up with the band's name, and was the genius behind tracks such as 'Arnold Layne' and 'See Emily Play'.
Syd Barrett
However, the mastermind of their first album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn started behaving more and more erratically. It is thought that his heavy use of the psychedelic drug LSD was to blame for his increasingly strange behaviour. Sadly, Barrett was replaced as the lead by David Gilmour, and later pushed out of the band in 1968. While he tried to launch a solo career, eventually Barrett moved back to Cambridge to live with his mother in obscurity until his death in 2006.
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