20 Celebrities Who Quit Hollywood at the Peak of Their Fame, Ranked

After headlining She's All That, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and two live-action Scooby-Doo films, Freddie Prinze Jr. grew tired of studio politics. By 2008, he stepped back from leading screen roles to join World Wrestling Entertainment as a creative writer and raise his children with Sarah Michelle Gellar.

After playing Cindy Lou Who in How the Grinch Stole Christmas at age seven and Jenny Humphrey on Gossip Girl as a teen, Taylor Momsen asked to be written off the CW drama in 2011. At 18, she retired from acting permanently to front her hard rock band The Pretty Reckless, scoring multiple number-one rock hits.

When Malcolm in the Middle wrapped its seventh season in 2006, 20-year-old Emmy nominee Frankie Muniz had banked tens of millions of dollars from television and the Agent Cody Banks movies. Instead of chasing adult film leads, he signed a two-year Formula BMW racing contract and later competed full-time in NASCAR.

In 2001, Josh Hartnett starred in both Pearl Harbor and Black Hawk Down and appeared on the cover of nearly every major magazine. Uncomfortable with invasive tabloid fame, he rejected offers to play both Superman and Batman, fired his agents, and returned home to Minnesota for years before taking selective roles.

By age 18, Leelee Sobieski had earned Golden Globe and Emmy nominations for Joan of Arc and acted alongside Tom Cruise in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. In 2012, at age 29, she walked away from Hollywood to raise her children in New York and build a second career exhibiting large-scale abstract paintings.

When King Joffrey Baratheon was poisoned in season four of HBO's Game of Thrones in 2014, 21-year-old Jack Gleeson had Hollywood at his feet. Instead, he stepped away from screen acting for nearly a decade to finish his theology and philosophy degree at Trinity College Dublin and run an independent theater company.

Between 1993 and 1996, Mara Wilson became one of the most recognizable children on Earth through Mrs. Doubtfire, Miracle on 34th Street, and Matilda. Following the death of her mother during Matilda's production, she lost her passion for film sets, retired after 2000's Thomas and the Magic Railroad, and wrote books.

Born into Hollywood royalty as Henry Fonda's granddaughter and Peter Fonda's daughter, Bridget Fonda headlined Single White Female, Jackie Brown, and A Simple Plan in the 1990s. After fracturing two vertebrae in a 2003 Pacific Coast Highway crash and marrying composer Danny Elfman, she never filmed another movie.

Phoebe Cates defined 1980s cinema with Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Gremlins before marrying Oscar winner Kevin Kline in 1989. The couple agreed to alternate filming schedules once they had children, and whenever it was Cates's turn to work, she chose to stay home, opening her Manhattan boutique Blue Tree in 2005.

From When Harry Met Sally in 1989 to You've Got Mail in 1998, Meg Ryan commanded up to 15 million dollars per picture as America's top romantic comedy lead. Feeling burned out by celebrity scrutiny in the 2000s, she retreated from studio films to renovate homes and raise her children away from Los Angeles.

After starring opposite Denzel Washington in Training Day, Will Smith in Hitch, and Ryan Gosling in The Place Beyond the Pines, Eva Mendes made her last screen appearance in 2014's Lost River. An unspoken agreement with Gosling led her to step off film sets entirely to raise their two daughters and build a home brand.

Cast as Michelle Tanner on Full House at nine months old, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen built Dualstar into a billion-dollar retail empire before turning 18. After 2004's New York Minute, Ashley never acted again and Mary-Kate followed in 2012, winning five CFDA awards as founders of minimal luxury house The Row.

Throughout the 1980s, Rick Moranis anchored Ghostbusters, Spaceballs, Little Shop of Horrors, and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. After his wife Ann Belsky died of breast cancer in 1991, Moranis realized he could not travel to distant movie locations while raising two small children alone, stepping away from sets in 1997.

With over 7 billion dollars in global box-office receipts from The Mask, There's Something About Mary, Charlie's Angels, and Shrek, Cameron Diaz stunned studios by walking away after 2014's Annie. She spent the next decade raising two children with husband Benji Madden and co-founding organic wine brand Avaline.

In 2004, Chappelle's Show became the best-selling television DVD in history and Comedy Central offered Dave Chappelle a 50-million-dollar contract renewal. Troubled by creative interference during season three tapings in May 2005, he left the set without warning, flew to Durban, South Africa, and stayed off TV.

Daniel Day-Lewis remains the only man in Oscar history with three Best Actor wins for My Left Foot, There Will Be Blood, and Lincoln. In the late 1990s he left cinema to apprentice under cobbler Stefano Bemer in Florence, and in 2017 he retired again for seven years before filming a lone project with his son.

After defining James Bond in seven films and winning an Oscar for The Untouchables, Sean Connery declined the role of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, forfeiting an estimated 450 million dollars in backend points. Frustrated with the production of 2003's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, he retired for good.

For four consecutive years from 1935 to 1938, child prodigy Shirley Temple outdrew Clark Gable and Gary Cooper as Hollywood's top box-office draw. She announced her retirement from feature films in 1950 at just 22 years old, later serving as Chief of Protocol and U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia.

With four Best Actress Oscar nominations across classics like Anna Christie, Camille, and Ninotchka, Greta Garbo was the highest-paid woman in America during the 1930s. After 1941's Two-Faced Woman, the 36-year-old star took what she thought was a brief wartime break, then spent the next 49 years privately in New York.

Between 1952 and 1956, Grace Kelly starred in High Noon, three Alfred Hitchcock thrillers including Rear Window, and won the Best Actress Oscar for The Country Girl. At age 26, at the zenith of her career, she married Prince Rainier III in April 1956 and gave up acting forever to serve as Princess Consort of Monaco.