19 Child Actors Who Quit Hollywood for Good

1 | Shirley Temple

Not only was Shirley Temple the most famous child star of the '30s and '40s, she was also the biggest box office draw of actors of any age from 1935 to 1938. Her contract with 20th Century Fox meant that the curly-haired phenom made several movies a year for the studio, but when that agreement ended, Temple wasn't able to find the same success anywhere else. As she became a teenager and then a young woman, the parts began to dry out and her films were less of a theatrical draw. Temple retired from Hollywood at the age of 22, but she didn't leave public life for good. The former child star became involved in politics, running (unsuccessfully) for Congress and later becoming a diplomat for the United States. She was appointed the U.S. ambassador to Ghana and then Czechoslovakia, and retired to California, where she lived until her death in 2014 at the age of 85.

2 | Alisan Porter

The adorable Alisan Porter appeared in Parenthood, I Love You to Death, and other '80s and '90s movies and TV shows. But you probably remember her best as the titular character in the 1991 John Hughes movie, Curly Sue. Despite her childhood on various sets, Porter went to high school like a regular teenager and continued performing in school plays and musicals. After graduation, she didn't return to Hollywood but instead tried her hand at Broadway, appearing in a revival of A Chorus Line in the mid-'00s. Since then, Porter has been devoted to acting on stage and to her music. In 2016, she was crowned the winner of the tenth season of The Voice, and she's released three studio albums.

3 | Barret Oliver

Barret Oliver had quite a run in the '80s, guest starring on shows including The Incredible Hulk, Knight Rider, and The Twilight Zone and appearing in movies including Frankenweenie and Cocoon and its sequel. His biggest claim to fame, however, is playing Bastian in the 1984 fantasy classic, The NeverEnding Story. Oliver's last role was 1989's Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills, which came out when he was 16 years old. And after leaving the film business, he pursued another art form. He's now a photographer and printer who specializes in techniques developed in the 19th century.

4 | Jake Lloyd

Jake Lloyd, who took on the pivotal role of Anakin Skywalker as a child in 1999's The Phantom Menace, hadn't even been born yet when the original Star Wars movies hit theaters. And while many young fans would have given up all their action figures to be a part of the universe, Lloyd has said that his role led to bullying at school, which ultimately pushed him to leave acting.

"My entire school life was really a living hell, and I had to do up to 60 interviews a day,” he told The Sun (via A.V. Club). "Other children were really mean to me…They would make the sound of the lightsaber every time they saw me. It was totally mad.”

5 | Amanda Bynes

At the height of her career, it seemed like Amanda Bynes was everywhere, from headlining her own TV show to starring in movies including What a Girl Wants and She’s the Man. But after watching herself in Easy A alongside Emma Stone, Bynes—who told Paper she was high at the time—decided to retire from acting.

“I literally couldn’t stand my appearance in that movie and I didn’t like my performance,” she told the magazine. “I was absolutely convinced I needed to stop acting after seeing it.”

6 | Mara Wilson

Mara Wilson is best known for playing the title role in Matilda, but she also appeared in several other big movies when she was a kid, including A Miracle on 34th Street and Mrs. Doubtfire. She decided to retire as she got older due to the restrictive beauty standards of the industry.

“As I saw it, I had three choices: get cosmetic surgery and go out on auditions for the cute and funny best friend characters, stay the way I was and go out for the meager character actor roles for young women, or accept myself and give up the idea of a Hollywood film acting career for good,” Wilson wrote in her book Where Am I Now?, according to People.

7 | Peter Ostrum

Peter Ostrum only ever had one film role: playing Charlie Bucket in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory in 1971. Ostrom, who is now 63, never acted again, and it’s because he fell in love with a different career path: being a veterinarian. As he told the American Veterinarian Medical Association, he’d come home from filming to find that his parents had bought a horse and that he loved watching the vet work on him.

"I can remember the veterinarian coming out and taking care of the horses, and it made a huge impression on me," he said. "This person really enjoyed what he did for a living. My father was a lawyer, and I really didn't have a clue what he did all day. But I knew exactly what the veterinarian did. Someone making a living from something he enjoyed so much really sparked my interest."

8 | Jennette McCurdy

You may have noticed that Sam wasn't a part of the iCarly reboot, and that’s because Jennette McCurdy has officially retired from acting—something she explained on a 2021 episode of her podcast, Empty Inside.

“I feel so unfulfilled by the roles that I played and felt like it was the most just cheesy, embarrassing,” she said, as reported by Variety. “I imagine there’s a very different experience to be had with acting if you’re proud of your roles.”

9 | Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen built an empire on their popular role on Full House, including movies and all kinds of merchandise bearing their faces. But as soon as they hit adulthood, they took a step back from the spotlight in favor of giving all of their attention to their fashion designing careers instead.

"I was reading scripts, and ultimately I just said to the people who are representing me, 'I need to do things 100 percent. I don't feel like I can give you 100 percent of my time,'" Ashley told Allure in 2013.

10 | Ariana Richards

You might remember Ariana Richards as Lex Murphy in Jurassic Park, but since then, she’s mostly been laying low. Why? She told Amblin that her visual art—Richards is a painter—has taken precedence, but that she’d be willing to act again if the right role came around.

“Even though I’ve been focusing on art for a long time, since I was in college, and made that such a focus and priority, I absolutely adore acting. If the right role came along, the right opportunity, I would totally jump at the chance,” she said.

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11 | Ross Malinger

Ross Malinger is the actor who played Jonah, Tom Hanks’ character's son, in Sleepless in Seattle. He's since slipped away from the spotlight, opting to work in automotive sales as an adult.

12 | Kay Panabaker

Kay Panabaker once frequently appeared in Disney Channel shows and movies, but these days, she's working for the Mouse in a much different capacity. According to People, she retired from acting in favor of going to college and now works as a zoologist for Disney.

13 | Jeff Cohen

It was only a few years after his role as Chunk in The Goonies that Jeff Cohen disappeared from Hollywood—but what made him leave? According to what he told The Daily Mail, after he hit puberty and started losing weight, the roles for him began to dry up.

​​“There were basically about four fat kids in town, so every time there was a fat kid role you saw the same people at the audition. It was survival of the fattest,” he said. “But when I hit puberty, it was a career ender for me. I was transforming from Chunk to hunk and I couldn’t get roles any more. It was terrible. My first love was acting but puberty had other ideas. It was a forced retirement. I didn't give up acting. Acting gave me up."

Coehn went on to become an attorney instead and even negotiated for former Goonies co-star Ke Huy Quan in his deal to star in Everything Everywhere All at Once.

14 | Lisa Jakub

One of Lisa Jakub’s most notable roles is playing Robin Williams’ character's teenage daughter in Mrs. Doubtfire, and like her co-star Mara Wilson, she decided to retire from acting at a young age. She wrote in a since-deleted blog post in 2013 that acting wasn’t fun for her anymore, and that she was ready to try something new. She had also seen how other former child stars had struggled.

"I had no desire to be a cautionary tale," Jakub wrote.

15 | Jason Zimbler

Jason Zimbler was hilariously annoying as Clarissa’s little brother, Ferguson, on Nickelodeon's Clarissa Explains It All, but he hasn’t appeared in anything since the show ended in 1994. He went on to lead a pretty private life, pursuing a career as a software designer instead of as an actor.

16 | Carrie Henn

Carrie Henn is another child actor who only has one credited role—albeit a big one. She played Newt in the horror sequel Aliens. After filming the movie while her military family was stationed in London, they packed up and moved back to the United States, and Henn would grow up to become a teacher instead.

"It’s very weird, because I have a daughter who’s now the age I was when I made the movie, and she’s like my clone," she told Wired in 2016. "So as I’m watching it, it’s like watching my daughter up there."

17 | Ross Bagley

Ross Bagley played Nicky—Aunt Viv and Uncle Phil’s youngest son—on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. According to Us Weekly, after graduating college, Bagley decided not to continue acting and went into real estate instead. He did make sure to show up for the HBO Max Fresh Prince reunion, though.

18 | Danny Lloyd

Danny Lloyd, who played Danny Torrance in The Shining, has been out of the acting game since childhood. He told The Guardian it was early in his teenage years when he realized he was ready to move on.

“I always enjoyed it. It was exciting. But as I got a little bit older, it got kind of boring,” he said. “Then I had to tell my parents that I was ready to quit. Which they were fine with. They were never stage parents. They made sure I had a normal upbringing.”

In 2019, Lloyd returned to the screen for a cameo in The Shining sequel, Doctor Sleep.

19 | Liesel Matthews

Liesl Matthews is best known for playing Sara Crewe in 1995’s A Little Princess, but she didn’t do much acting beyond that. She told Forbes she originally planned on returning to acting after college but ended up caught in a lawsuit. She sued her family after finding out that her father and cousins had misused money that was supposed to go into a trust for her and her brother, resulting in a $500 million payout for each of them.