19 Movies That Almost Made Actors Quit Acting Posted by Amy Glover Last Updated: January 12, 2024 19 Movies That Almost Made Actors Quit Acting “It felt like, all of a sudden, I was a poster,” Elordi said in the interview. “Like I was a billboard. It felt like it was for sale. Then my brain went through the f**king wringer. Like, I wasn’t sure if I was genuine. It really skews your view. It creates a very paranoid way of living.” Of course, the fame that came with the role has its effect, too. “I’d walk down the red carpet and go into the bathroom,” she said. “I had on so much makeup and these big, fluffy, full-on dresses. I’d put my hands on the sink and look at myself in the mirror and say, ‘Who is this?’ I didn’t connect with the person who was looking back at me, and that was a very unsettling feeling… I’ve often thought, I’m so wrong for this job because I’m too serious.” 3. Robert Pattinson’s audition for Twilight almost meant he quit acting altogether. “I was saying no and they were like, ‘You just brought a guitar into just to hold it? Why did you bring a guitar in?’,” he said. “My entire confidence just s**t the bed. The audition was one of the worst auditions I did in my whole life. I remember calling my parents and saying, ‘I’m done, I can’t torture myself anymore,’ and the next day I got [another] Twilight audition.” 4. Margot Robbie hated the lack of privacy she had afterThe Wolf of Wall Street so much, she almost left the industry. 5. Jessica Alba says she almost quit acting altogether after filming Fantastic Four. “And then it all got me thinking: Am I not good enough? Are my instincts and my emotions not good enough? Do people hate them so much that they don’t want me to be a person? Am I not allowed to be a person in my work? And so I just said, ‘F*ck it. I don’t care about this business anymore,'” she added. 6. Rooney Mara almost left the industry entirely after filming a 2010 Nightmare on Elm Street remake. “I have to be careful with what I say and how I talk about it,” she said. “It wasn’t the best experience making it and I kind of got to this place, that I still live in, that I don’t want to act unless I’m doing stuff that I feel like I have to do. So after making that film, I kind of decided, ‘Ok, I’m just not going to act anymore unless it’s something that I feel that way about.’” 7. Anya Taylor-Joy almost gave up acting after landing Emma, saying it brought up a lot of trauma for her. “For some reason I guess that triggered some childhood trauma and I was like, ‘I can’t do it. There’s no way, I’m going to really let people down,'” she said. This worry, combined with her packed schedule, led her to think, “Oh, I don’t know if I can do this,” she says. 8. Jennifer Aniston almost quit acting after one particular job (frustratingly, we don’t know what it is, though it was before her role as Alex Levy in Apple TV+’s The Morning Show). “It was after a job I had completed and I was like, ‘Whoa, that was really… that sucked the life out of me. And I don’t know if this is what interests me,’” she said. “It was an unprepared project, we’ve all been a part of them. You always say: ‘I’ll never again! Never again! I will never back up into a start date!’” 9. Christian Bale almost gave up on acting after Empire of the Sun (which he starred in aged 13), because the fame was so uncomfortable. He also revealed that he now thinks “child acting just becomes abuse” at a certain level. “I had problems. I wasn’t happy. And, you know, I can’t help looking at it now and saying there’s a point at which a child acting just becomes abuse. I really think it can just kill all the enjoyment a child is getting from it, and I look at it now with unease. Maybe there are some wonderful people, but me, I always suspect someone who wants to make their money from children,” he added. 10. Freddie Prinze Jr. said that acting in I Know What You Did Last Summer “wasn’t the best experience,” leading him to wonder if he could stick with the career. And when he was asked to do a dangerous stunt, Freddie said “It was so scary. And it was my first real experience in the business on a big movie, being the lead of a movie… I was like, ‘Yo, if this is how it’s going to be, I can’t handle this.'” 11. Chris Evans was so anxious filming Puncture that made him wonder if he should quit the industry. 12. Big-name movies like Juno and Superbad almost meant Michael Cera left the business. He disliked the attention so much that he turned down an invitation to host SNL, and almost quit altogether. “I was kind of having a bit of a crisis… I was really not enjoying the level of heat,” he said, adding “I really didn’t know if I was going to keep being an actor.” 13. Asa Butterfield was disturbed by his childhood role in The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas even though he “knew it was only acting.” “When we were finished on Boy In The Striped Pyjamas – I don’t remember this, but my mum told me after I finished that job – I said I didn’t want to be an actor anymore. Which I find interesting now,” he said. 14. Cate Blanchett almost left the biz after Tár. “I’m always trying to get out of acting. I’ve been trying to stop acting my entire professional life,” she said at Cannes last year. 15. Daniel Day-Lewis really DID quit after Phantom Thread. 16. Hayden Christensen more or less left showbiz after Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (Episode III). “You can’t take years off and not have it affect your career. But I don’t know — in a weird, sort of destructive way, there was something appealing about that to me. There was something in the back of my head that was like, ‘If this time away is gonna be damaging to my career, then so be it. If I can come back afterward and claw my way back in, then maybe I’ll feel like I earned it,” he added. 17. Jake Lloyd quit acting pretty quickly after the stress of press attention and bullying following his role in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (Episode I). “My entire school life was really a living hell, and I had to do up to 60 interviews a day,” Lloyd told The Sun. “Other children were really mean to me… They would make the sound of the lightsaber every time they saw me. It was totally mad.” 18. Carrie Henn, who played nine-year-old Newt on Aliens, quit acting after the movie wrapped — it taught her acting wasn’t her passion. 19. Peter Ostrum stopped acting after 1971’s Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory, ostensibly because the three-film deal producer David L. Wolper offered him would restrict the freedom of his future projects. However, those ‘future projects’ never came. Can you think of any other examples? Let us know in the comments below! Source link
“It felt like, all of a sudden, I was a poster,” Elordi said in the interview. “Like I was a billboard. It felt like it was for sale. Then my brain went through the f**king wringer. Like, I wasn’t sure if I was genuine. It really skews your view. It creates a very paranoid way of living.” Of course, the fame that came with the role has its effect, too. “I’d walk down the red carpet and go into the bathroom,” she said. “I had on so much makeup and these big, fluffy, full-on dresses. I’d put my hands on the sink and look at myself in the mirror and say, ‘Who is this?’ I didn’t connect with the person who was looking back at me, and that was a very unsettling feeling… I’ve often thought, I’m so wrong for this job because I’m too serious.” 3. Robert Pattinson’s audition for Twilight almost meant he quit acting altogether. “I was saying no and they were like, ‘You just brought a guitar into just to hold it? Why did you bring a guitar in?’,” he said. “My entire confidence just s**t the bed. The audition was one of the worst auditions I did in my whole life. I remember calling my parents and saying, ‘I’m done, I can’t torture myself anymore,’ and the next day I got [another] Twilight audition.” 4. Margot Robbie hated the lack of privacy she had afterThe Wolf of Wall Street so much, she almost left the industry. 5. Jessica Alba says she almost quit acting altogether after filming Fantastic Four. “And then it all got me thinking: Am I not good enough? Are my instincts and my emotions not good enough? Do people hate them so much that they don’t want me to be a person? Am I not allowed to be a person in my work? And so I just said, ‘F*ck it. I don’t care about this business anymore,'” she added. 6. Rooney Mara almost left the industry entirely after filming a 2010 Nightmare on Elm Street remake. “I have to be careful with what I say and how I talk about it,” she said. “It wasn’t the best experience making it and I kind of got to this place, that I still live in, that I don’t want to act unless I’m doing stuff that I feel like I have to do. So after making that film, I kind of decided, ‘Ok, I’m just not going to act anymore unless it’s something that I feel that way about.’” 7. Anya Taylor-Joy almost gave up acting after landing Emma, saying it brought up a lot of trauma for her. “For some reason I guess that triggered some childhood trauma and I was like, ‘I can’t do it. There’s no way, I’m going to really let people down,'” she said. This worry, combined with her packed schedule, led her to think, “Oh, I don’t know if I can do this,” she says. 8. Jennifer Aniston almost quit acting after one particular job (frustratingly, we don’t know what it is, though it was before her role as Alex Levy in Apple TV+’s The Morning Show). “It was after a job I had completed and I was like, ‘Whoa, that was really… that sucked the life out of me. And I don’t know if this is what interests me,’” she said. “It was an unprepared project, we’ve all been a part of them. You always say: ‘I’ll never again! Never again! I will never back up into a start date!’” 9. Christian Bale almost gave up on acting after Empire of the Sun (which he starred in aged 13), because the fame was so uncomfortable. He also revealed that he now thinks “child acting just becomes abuse” at a certain level. “I had problems. I wasn’t happy. And, you know, I can’t help looking at it now and saying there’s a point at which a child acting just becomes abuse. I really think it can just kill all the enjoyment a child is getting from it, and I look at it now with unease. Maybe there are some wonderful people, but me, I always suspect someone who wants to make their money from children,” he added. 10. Freddie Prinze Jr. said that acting in I Know What You Did Last Summer “wasn’t the best experience,” leading him to wonder if he could stick with the career. And when he was asked to do a dangerous stunt, Freddie said “It was so scary. And it was my first real experience in the business on a big movie, being the lead of a movie… I was like, ‘Yo, if this is how it’s going to be, I can’t handle this.'” 11. Chris Evans was so anxious filming Puncture that made him wonder if he should quit the industry. 12. Big-name movies like Juno and Superbad almost meant Michael Cera left the business. He disliked the attention so much that he turned down an invitation to host SNL, and almost quit altogether. “I was kind of having a bit of a crisis… I was really not enjoying the level of heat,” he said, adding “I really didn’t know if I was going to keep being an actor.” 13. Asa Butterfield was disturbed by his childhood role in The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas even though he “knew it was only acting.” “When we were finished on Boy In The Striped Pyjamas – I don’t remember this, but my mum told me after I finished that job – I said I didn’t want to be an actor anymore. Which I find interesting now,” he said. 14. Cate Blanchett almost left the biz after Tár. “I’m always trying to get out of acting. I’ve been trying to stop acting my entire professional life,” she said at Cannes last year. 15. Daniel Day-Lewis really DID quit after Phantom Thread. 16. Hayden Christensen more or less left showbiz after Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (Episode III). “You can’t take years off and not have it affect your career. But I don’t know — in a weird, sort of destructive way, there was something appealing about that to me. There was something in the back of my head that was like, ‘If this time away is gonna be damaging to my career, then so be it. If I can come back afterward and claw my way back in, then maybe I’ll feel like I earned it,” he added. 17. Jake Lloyd quit acting pretty quickly after the stress of press attention and bullying following his role in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (Episode I). “My entire school life was really a living hell, and I had to do up to 60 interviews a day,” Lloyd told The Sun. “Other children were really mean to me… They would make the sound of the lightsaber every time they saw me. It was totally mad.” 18. Carrie Henn, who played nine-year-old Newt on Aliens, quit acting after the movie wrapped — it taught her acting wasn’t her passion. 19. Peter Ostrum stopped acting after 1971’s Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory, ostensibly because the three-film deal producer David L. Wolper offered him would restrict the freedom of his future projects. However, those ‘future projects’ never came. Can you think of any other examples? Let us know in the comments below!
