Actors Who Decided to Step Away from Acting — and Whether or Not They Stuck to Their Decisions

Shelley Duvall

In 2002, following a prolific career in Hollywood including roles in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, Robert Altman's Popeye and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, Duvall decided to step away from it all and retired to her native Texas.

"It's the longest sabbatical I ever took," she told PEOPLE of the move, which occurred when her brother was diagnosed with spinal cancer, "but it was for really important reasons — to get in touch with my family again."

Now, 20 years later, the 73-year-old actress is returning to the screen in an indie horror film, The Forest Hills, which premiered on March 11 at Smodcastle Cinemas in New Jersey.

"Acting again — it's so much fun. It enriches your life," Duvall told PEOPLE. "[Jessica Tandy] won an Oscar when she was 80. I can still win," she added with a wink and a laugh.

Ke Huy Quan

Twenty years after making the "very difficult decision" to step away from acting, Quan returned to the screen in a major way with his Oscar-winning performance as Waymond Wang in Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Quan's career on screen began once his family arrived in Los Angeles after fleeing Vietnam after the Vietnam War. The actor's older brother was headed to an open audition for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and 12-year-old Quan decided to tag along.

Quan landed the role in the 1984 film and the following year booked a role in another fan favorite, Goonies.

He then made the decision to step away from Hollywood, as offers were coming less and less frequently. After graduating from film school at USC, he became a successful assistant director and stunt coordinator. It wasn't until he watched 2018's Crazy Rich Asians, that Quan decided it might be time to revisit acting.

"I was happy working behind the camera but I had serious FOMO," he said with a laugh. "I wanted to be up there with my fellow Asian actors!"

Brendan Fraser

Audiences were on their feet — literally — when Fraser delivered a comeback performance in 2022's The Whale, 13 years after his last major role.

In the film, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival and earned a six-minute standing ovation, Fraser plays a reclusive writing professor, Charlie, attempting to reconnect with his estranged daughter. The actor underwent a dramatic physical transformation to play the 600-lb. man, and ultimately won an Oscar for his performance.

After first rising to fame in the early '90s for roles in films like George and the Jungle, Fraser's career took off when he landed his role in the Mummy franchise. He continued to act into the late '90s and 2000s but stepped out of the spotlight due to a variety of personal issues including multiple surgeries and the death of his mother.

In an interview with GQ in 2018, Fraser also recounted an alleged sexual assault he experienced at the hands of the former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (the non-profit organization that votes for the Golden Globe awards), Philip Berk, in 2003. Berk has denied the allegations, but Fraser said he felt as if the HFPA had blacklisted him following the incident.

Jane Fonda

After a decades-long career in the business starting with her first feature film role in 1960's Tall Story, Fonda decided to retire from acting in 1991 after marrying Ted Turner.

"I left for 15 years, when I married Ted Turner, and I did not think I was gonna come back, 'cause when I married him, I thought it'd be forever," Fonda told Entertainment Tonight while promoting her most recent film 80 for Brady.

"But I came back, and frankly, if anybody told me that at 85, I'd be doing this kind of movie, I would have not believed them," she continued. "So I feel very lucky."

The actress and Turner divorced in 2001 after 10 years of marriage and she made her return to film in 2005's Monster-in-Law opposite Jennifer Lopez, going on to appear in a string of films and TV shows, including an Emmy-nominated guest spot on The Newsroom.

From 2015 to 2022, she starred alongside Lily Tomlin on Netflix's Grace and Frankie.

Cameron Diaz

Diaz is returning to the screen for the first time since 2014 in the aptly named Netflix flick, Back in Action, alongside Jamie Foxx.

In 2021, the Charlie's Angels actress opened up about her decision to take a step back from acting following her 2014 roles in The Other Woman, Sex Tape and Annie.

"When you do something at a really high level for a long period of time," other parts of you have "to sort of be handed off to other people," she explained to Kevin Hart on his talk show Hart to Heart.

She continued explaining that at around the age 40, she realized that there were "so many parts of my life ... that I wasn't touching and that I wasn't managing."

The decision, she said, left her feeling "whole."

Since then, she met her husband Benji Madden and the two welcomed daughter, Raddix, in December 2019.

Of her return, a source close to the film told PEOPLE following the casting announcement that, "When this project came along and she was pursued by Jamie Foxx, who she has known and worked with for years, she decided to go for it."

The two were spotted on set for the film in February 2023 in London.

Lindsay Lohan

After years of ups and downs, audiences welcomed Lohan back to their screens Netflix's 2022 film Falling for Christmas.

The film marked Lohan's first leading role in a film since 2013's The Canyons, though she had a supporting role in 2019's Among the Shadows.

Lohan told The Hollywood Reporter that returning to acting "is like riding a bicycle."

She added, "It's just in me. It's a part of me. Doing films, playing a character, it brings me so much joy to be able to share a story with people. To take people on that journey with me is such a blessing."

The Parent Trap actress is also set to star in another Netflix rom-com, Irish Wish, as a love-struck bridesmaid at her best friend's wedding. However, she has an even more exciting project in the works: she's expecting her first child!

Ahead of her return to film, in 2022, Lohan starred in a Super Bowl ad for Planet Fitness, "What's Gotten Into Lindsay," which playfully poked fun at her past.

Terrence Howard

In September 2019, the Empire actor announced that he was "done" with acting. When the final season of the hit show ended, so would his time in Hollywood, Howard told Extra's Cheslie Kryst.

Kryst asked Howard about his plans once the show is over. "What do you think will happen with your career? What do you see yourself doing going forward?" Terrence responded, "Oh, I'm done with acting. I'm done pretending."

Kryst then asked Howard if he would be making a pivot to philanthropy, to which he replied, "No, not philanthropy; I'm just focusing on bringing truth to the world."

Despite his statement, Howard ultimately appeared in numerous roles between 2020 and 2022 including 2022's The Best Man: The Final Chapters miniseries.

While promoting the series, he said he was ready to retire — again.

"This is the end for me. This is the end for me," he said before adding of his Best Man co-stars, "I don't know if it's the end for the rest of them." He continued, "I retired two years ago, for the most part. I was done."

Robert Redford

After an illustrious 60-year career, Robert Redford shared that he would be retiring from acting after 2018's The Old Man & the Gun.

"Never say never, but I pretty well concluded that this would be it for me in terms of acting, and [I'll] move towards retirement after this 'cause I've been doing it since I was 21," Redford explained to Entertainment Weekly at the time of his 2016 announcement. "I thought, 'Well, that's enough.' And why not go out with something that's very upbeat and positive?"

Over the years, Redford has earned two Oscars, six Golden Globes, and one BAFTA, among several other accolades. He has starred in dozens of films, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, The Great Gatsby, All the President's Men, and Out of Africa. He has directed critically acclaimed movies like A River Runs Through It and Ordinary People, and he founded the Sundance Institute.

But Redford may not leave Hollywood entirely. When EW asked him if he would still direct films, he said, "We'll see about that."

While promoting the 2018 film, though, Redford expressed regret for making the big announcement.

"I think it was a mistake to say that I was retiring because you never know," the actor PEOPLE. "It did feel like it was time maybe, to concentrate on another category."

While he has racked up producing credits, per IMDB, Redford was also featured in 2019's Avengers: End Game.

Portia de Rossi

Despite having successful (and long-running) acting stints on Arrested Development and Scandal, de Rossi made the decision to leave the industry ahead of her 45th birthday in 2018.

"I was approaching 45 and I just kind of … was wondering is there something that I could tackle now that I've never done before that would be really challenging and different," de Rossi explained to wife Ellen DeGeneres on her talk show. "I kind of knew what acting would look like for me for the next 10, 20 years, so I decided to quit and start a business."

But that all changed following a conversation the actress had with AD creator Mitch Hurwitz.

"I called Mitch Hurwitz, who's the creator of Arrested Development and I said, 'If there is a season 5, I won't be doing it because I quit acting. And he seemed really understanding and he totally got it. We had a great conversation, and then he wrote me into five episodes," she said. "Don't know how it happened, but yes, I am on season 5."

Though since then, she has not made any more returns to the screen.

Daniel Day-Lewis

In 2017, Day-Lewis announced he'd be stepping away from acting — but it wasn't the first time.

The famously selective actor quit acting onstage during a 1989 performance of Hamlet in London. And after filming The Boxer in the mid-'90s, he retreated from the business, instead apprenticing in the arts of woodworking and shoemaking. He's taken five-year breaks before, too.

He said these hiatuses were necessary for him to pursue his craft: "I never went away," he said. "I never left myself. I simply need the time I spend not working in films, the time away, to do the work that I love to do in the way that I love to do it."

But this is the first official announcement of actually quitting the industry, and we'll just have to wait and see if it sticks. His last role was in 2017's Phantom Thread.

Doris Day

"Que Sera, Sera" (which translates to "what will be, will be") was Day's biggest hit — and it seems, her motto for her career!

She was one of the biggest names in Hollywood during the '50s and '60s, starring in films like The Pajama Game and The Man Who Knew Too Much, as well as fronting her own TV series, The Doris Day Show, for five years.

But after the show's fifth season, a 50-year-old Day retired from the spotlight to her estate in Carmel, California. "It wasn't the city I knew anymore," she told PEOPLE of Hollywood in 2017, when she celebrated her 95th birthday. "If I had stayed, I might be playing a grandmother — who knows! But I love living in a small town. I have my pets around me, and I like to answer my fan mail." The actress died in May 2019.

Gene Hackman

The Royal Tenenbaums star said sayonara to show biz on July 7, 2004, when he told Larry King that his career was "probably all over," and he had no new scripts in front of him.

That made 2004's Welcome to Mooseport his last movie (and his 100th overall credit). He confirmed his retirement in 2008.

Audrey Hepburn

Hepburn, of course, went from actress to icon thanks to her work in films like Breakfast at Tiffany's, Roman Holiday and My Fair Lady.

But following the late 1960s, she gave it all up to focus on charity work. Well, almost — Hepburn appeared in a few more films before her death in 1993.

She became a huge force for good through her work with UNICEF, traveling to countries like Honduras, Vietnam and Somalia to work on humanitarian causes. President George H.W. Bush eventually honored her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Sean Connery

He became a legend as James Bond, but at the age of 75, Connery decided to retire in 2006. (As most 75 year olds outside of the business would do!) His final film was League of Extraordinary Gentleman, though there were rumors that he'd come out of retirement in the years after to reprise his role in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Although he admitted it was an enticing offer, Connery declined. "If anything could have pulled me out of retirement, it would have been an Indiana Jones film," he said. "But in the end, retirement is just too damned much fun."

Connery died in 2020 at the age of 90.

Debra Winger

The three-time Oscar nominee didn't retire, but she did take a hiatus — 1995 to 2001 — from the business.

"It was an organic thing," she told The Boston Globe of her break. "I think with anything you're choosing or finding your way with, if it's not pulling you forward a little bit, you're going to feel like you've come to a dead end eventually."

But she came back after the break, first, in the film Big Bad Love. She starred on the Netflix original series The Ranch from 2016-2020 and most recently appeared in the 2021 series Mr. Corman and Ultra City Smiths.

Greta Garbo

Bad reviews are part of the business — but for the Swedish star, it was enough to push her into early retirement. When her film, Two-Faced Woman, tanked, the 35-year-old star was embarrassed and decided to wait for World War II to come to an end before pursuing any other films. A few opportunities came about, but nothing ever materalized, making Two-Faced Woman her last film.

Garbo always preferred to be alone or with loved ones. "As early as I can remember, I have wanted to be alone," she said. "I detest crowds, don't like many people." She spent the rest of her life doing just that, living in a Manhattan apartment and taking long walks through the city.

Cary Grant

For Grant, fatherhood came first. He retired from the business in 1966 at the age of 62 in order to raise his daughter, Jennifer, who was born that year. He said that focusing on her upbringing was more "important" than acting. "I could have gone on acting and playing a grandfather or a bum," he said. "But I discovered more important things in life."

Shirley Temple

She remains the most successful child star of all time, but Temple just couldn't capture the same sort of popularity as an adult.

She left show business for the first time at age 12 to go to school full-time. After attempting a comeback in her early 20s, she formally retired in 1950. But this was hardly the end of Temple's professional life. She went on to have a successful career as a diplomat, serving as the Ambassador to Ghana and later to Czechoslovakia.