14 Child Actors Who Quit While They Were Way Ahead
If you spent your childhood hanging out with peak ‘90s Will Smith every day, you have two choices: 1) keep acting until it grinds your psyche into dust; or 2) become a hybrid DJ/real estate/finance bro.
Jeff Cohen
Chunk from The Goonies says he got too hot, so he became a lawyer: “I was transforming from Chunk to hunk, and I couldn’t get roles any more. My clients get a kick out of the fact their lawyer is Chunk.”
Barret Oliver
Bastian from The Neverending Story dropped out of the biz 10 years after he got to surf the luckdragon, and has become an accomplished printer and photographer. You may have read his book, A History of the Woodburytype, if you’re a tremendous 19th-century photography nerd.
Charlie Korsmo
He played Robin Williams’ kid in Hook as a child, then took a decade off, but made one triumphant encore as nerdy William Lichter in Can’t Hardly Wait. After that, he became a nerd himself, studying physics at MIT, then law at Yale and now teaching corporate law at a university in Cleveland.
Jonathan Taylor Thomas
The tween heartthrob made the best decision of his professional life — distancing himself from renowned coke snitch Tim Allen — when he opted to quit Home Improvement one season early to go to college.
Jennette McCurdy
The Nickelodeon star was sick of holding her family together as a pre-teen: “My mom put me in it when I was 6 and by age 10 or 11, I was the main financial support for my family.” She quit acting to pursue the noble art of podcasting.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen
They quit rapping about pizza to go be insanely rich and odd in New York City. Their last TV appearance was on SNL in 2004, and they instead pursued high-end fashion, finally allowing their little sister Elizabeth to take over the family business in 2011.
Jason Zimbler
Clarissa’s dork brother on Clarissa Explains It All, Ferguson W. Darling, went on to study business administration and theater direction, and he’s now a software designer for HBO.
Ross Bagley
Will Smith’s son in Independence Day and Buckwheat from The Little Rascals quit acting to become the world’s biggest bro: When he’s not DJing, he works in finance and real estate.
Erik Per Sullivan
After playing Dewey on Malcolm in the Middle, Sullivan got a handful of high-profile roles, but quit acting when he was 18. He’s never joined a Malcolm in the Middle reunion, nor will he appear in the reboot, but he does keep up with costar Jane Kaczmarek — at least enough to let her know he’s studying Victorian literature at “a very prestigious American university.”
Angus T. Jones
The little kid from Two and a Half Men got too Christian for his own britches — he said the show conflicted with his religious views, called it “filthy” and encouraged people to stop watching. All this while the show was still in production. Predictably, his role slowly disappeared from the show. He used this sabbatical to go to college, which seems to have mellowed him out: “I got pretty doomsday with my thinking for a long time, but now I’m having fun and enjoying where I’m at.”
Peter Ostrum
What ever happened to the cute, spunky, oddly sincere kid who won the golden ticket in 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory? When he got home from filming the movie, he got super interested in his family’s horses, became a big animal vet and never looked back: “In the end, leaving was the right decision. I don’t have any regrets at all.”
Mara Wilson
The moment the Matilda and Mrs. Doubtfire star started going through puberty, Hollywood started treating her like a sick animal. The final straw was 2000’s Thomas and the Magic Railroad: “I had to have the director come and sit with me and explain to me that my body was changing. I was horrified, I felt embarrassed, I felt like I had done something wrong even though I hadn’t. They brought out these sports bras that were meant to bind my chest. I felt completely humiliated.”
Shirley Temple
After a childhood of stardom, hard labor and persistent rumors that she was actually a 30-year-old little person, she decided she “had enough of pretend.” She went on to live a real American life: She parlayed a failed Congressional campaign into ambassadorships to Ghana and Czechoslovakia.
Omri Katz
Max from Hocus Pocus took a small handful of roles after breaking onto the scene as a goofy virgin, but as an adult he operates an online weed store called The Mary Danksters.
