12 Actors Who Quit Acting For Years — And Then Returned

These self-imposed breaks from Hollywood can last for years as these stars take care of their family, friends and mental health — but they don’t always last forever. After some time away, these actors have all returned to the red carpet, recharged and ready for where their career takes them next.

Find out why these stars stepped away from acting…

Cameron Diaz stepped away from the spotlight for nearly a decade to focus on her family and her personal life. But in 2022, it was announced that she would be making a return to acting in Back In Action alongside her longtime friend Jamie Foxx.

“I am back all thanks to Jamie. I had 10 years of not paying attention to anything. Not accepting any advances and then I got this script and thought that maybe it was time,” she said on The Graham Norton Show. “If I was going to leave my family for 10 hours a day, I wanted to do it with the most talented man in the entertainment business.”

She continued, “I loved those 10 years for me and my family. But I thought, ‘If I let this go away, if I don’t engage again, and if I don’t give it a chance, I am a fool.”

In 2014, Hilary Swank chose to give up acting to dedicate time to caring for her ill father. For three years, Hilary didn’t accept any projects and instead focused all of her efforts towards her father, who was recovering from a lung transplant.

“I took three years off from my career. I know a lot of people were like, ‘Oh my gosh, how can you take that much time off of your career? Aren’t you worried about…’ I’m like, ‘Worried about what?’ I’m only worried about my dad’s health. To think that your career could go away or something was the least of my concerns. The absolute last thing,” Hilary shared on CBS Sunday Morning. “I would have only regretted not being there.”

Back in the early 2000s, Clint Eastwood shared that he was officially retiring from acting in order to exclusively focus on work behind the camera. While he didn’t act for several years, he eventually made a return when he was approached about Million Dollar Baby.

“Since this picture [Changeling] was completed this year I have done another film in which I have performed, even though I said I wasn’t going to do that anymore. I think I started saying that back a few years ago, I said ‘I don’t think I’ll act anymore, I’ll stay behind the camera’ and then Million Dollar Baby came along and I liked that role. Now I’ve done Gran Torino,” Clint shared in 2008.

Daniel Day-Lewis may be officially retired now but there were points in his career when he previously quit acting and then made a comeback. After dramatically quitting acting in 1989 in the middle of a performance of Hamlet in London, he eventually returned to the screen once again. Then, after filming 1997’s The Boxer, Daniel went off the grid for five years, during which he spent time woodworking and shoemaking.

In 2002, he returned to the industry for Gangs of New York and continued to act for 15 more years until his 2017 retirement. While he alluded to this retirement being permanent, it appears he may be making a comeback once again after being spotted on the set of his son’s upcoming film Anemone.

“As an actor you learn, you learn; you shoot and shoot for a long time; and then you’re dog meat,” Daniel told The Irish Times in 2002 about his on-and-off career. “And then you realize that you learned nothing. And that’s a difficult thing to live with.”

Renée Zellweger took a break from acting between 2010 and 2016, a period of time she says she used to get “healthy.” She says she also got the chance to enjoy hobbies like writing music, studying international law, building a home and rescuing older dogs.

“I needed to. I was sick of the sound of my own voice. When I was working, I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, listen to you. Are you sad again, Renée? Oh, is this your mad voice?’ It was a regurgitation of the same emotional experiences,” she told British Vogue.

After Meg Ryan wrapped filming on her 2015 movie Ithaca, she decided to quit acting for a bit. During her time away from acting, Meg says she focused on family and the other parts of her “experience as a human being [she] wanted to develop.” Then, during the COVID lockdown, she had the idea for a new romantic comedy. In 2023, Meg made her big return with the release of What Happens Later, which she directed, co-wrote and starred in.

“Truly, the easiest part was acting in it. I want to direct again just so I can sit in the chair, because I’m sure there’s a lot of things I missed. I hadn’t done a role in a really long time, but it was fun with David [Duchovny],” Meg told Interview. “A lot of it was done in two shots. I’m proud of that. I set up everything beforehand so that once we were there, it was just David and I trying to tell the truth.”

When Eddie Murphy decided to take a break from acting in 2010, he was at a low point. He had just won the Razzie for worst actor of the decade, which followed a string of movies that bombed at the box office. Eddie says he felt that he needed to reassess things. Although he only intended for his break to last a year, it ended up being a lot longer.

“I was making s—-y movies. I was like, ‘This s–t ain’t fun. They’re giving me Razzies… Motherf—er gave me the ‘worst actor ever’ Razzie. [So I thought], ‘Maybe it’s time to take a break.’ I was only gonna take a break for a year, then all of a sudden six years go by, and I’m sitting on the couch and I could sit on the couch and not get off it, but I don’t want the last bunch of s–t they see me do [to be] bulls–t,” Eddie said on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast.

In the early 2000s, Rachel McAdams was on top of the world with blockbuster movies — but she decided to take a step back from it all. She moved back home to Canada and turned down role after role, including parts in The Devil Wears Prada, Casino Royale, and Iron Man. She spent her time biking around Toronto, hanging with her family, and recentering. While she admits there are roles she wishes she’d taken, she says she knows she made the right choice.

“I felt guilty for not capitalizing on the opportunity that I was being given, because I knew I was in such a lucky spot. But I also knew it wasn’t quite jiving with my personality and what I needed to stay sane,” she explained to Bustle. “There were definitely some anxious moments of wondering if I was just throwing it all away, and why was I doing that? It’s taken years to understand what I intuitively was doing.”

Ke Huy Quan began his career when he was just a child, landing roles in films like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies. But while he had success as a child star, the years that followed were a struggle. He couldn’t find roles for Asian American actors and he eventually decided to stop acting and go to film school. He worked behind the camera for decades but in his late 40s, he decided to give acting another try. He was cast in Everything Everywhere All at Once — which was life-changing for him.

“My journey started on a boat. I spent a year in a refugee camp and somehow I ended up here on Hollywood’s biggest stage,” he said during his Oscars acceptance speech. “They say stories like this only happen in the movies. I can’t believe this is happening to me. This is the American dream.”

Joaquin Phoenix has quit acting more than once during his career — although one time was a joke. In 2010, he starred in Casey Affleck’s mockumentary I’m Still Here in which he pretended to retire from acting in order to pursue a rap career. While fans eventually found out it was a joke, he did end up taking a step back from acting because he just wasn’t interested.

“I didn’t work for a while because there was nothing I was really interested in. And then there were four projects that I was interested in. There wasn’t any grand design. It just worked out that way,” he said at a press conference.

Tyler James Williams got his start as a child actor, appearing on shows like Sesame Street and  Everybody Hates Chris. But as a teenager, he realized the transition into adult roles would be tough. One producer even told him that after Everybody Hates Chris he’d “never see [him] as anything else and [he’ll] probably never work again.” Even though it may have been a joke, Tyler says it changed his plans for the future.

“I realized at 17 that I didn’t like the road I was on,” he told GQ. “So I decided to stop and pivot. I got with a really good acting coach and I turned down every single thing I was offered.”

When he felt ready, he made his big return and now stars on Abbott Elementary.

Matthew McConaughey quit acting for an extended period of time while trying to transition his career. After years of starring in rom-coms, Matthew wanted to be taken more seriously and be cast in more intense roles. While he wasn’t sure if Hollywood would take him back, he eventually started landing the roles he wanted.

“It was scary. I had long talks with my wife about needing to find a new vocation. ‘I think I’m going to teach high school classes. I think I’m going to study to be a conductor. I think I’m going to go be a wildlife guide.’ I honestly thought, ‘I stepped out of Hollywood. I got out of my lane.’ The lane Hollywood said I should stay in, and Hollywood’s like, ‘Well, f–k you, dude. You should have stayed in your lane. Later,’” he told Interview Magazine.