Track the careers of most actors and you typically find after their glory years a long cooling-off period of TV movies, voice-over work, or sitcom cameos.
Which actors enjoyed notable success, were perhaps beloved or at least widely recognizable, still young, seemingly at the peak of their trajectory and then just suddenly stopped acting? For no obvious reason such as illness or legal trouble.
I have a couple of random ones:
Quentin Dean, a southern-accented actress, an attractive brunette, who appeared in In the Heat of the Night and the westerns Will Penny and Stay Away, Joe, plus some TV appearances, all in about a two-year span. And then nothing.
Joy Bang, whose name always stands out in credits. Cute, sort of a jailbait look (she was older than she seemed), a very authentic presence. She was memorable in many big movies of the early '70s such as Cisco Pike and Play It Again, Sam; lots of television roles. Then, after 1973, absolutely nothing.
I suspect that the rate will be higher with female actors in this thread. Partly through wanting to raise children, and partly due to the probably lower shelf life for an actress’ career (e.g. only good till they’ve shown their tits a few times.)
Rand Kingsley nearly gave up acting completely after appearing in 3 Ninjas as the villain Hugo Snyder. Since his debut in 3 Ninjas, which earned him an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor (!) he has appeared in only ONE movie, The Gardener, and that was ten fucking years ago. I don’t know why he would abandon such a promising career, but there you have it. What caused his sudden downfall? Was it a debilitating drug addiction? A religious cult? Was he put in federal prison for tax fraud?
Jaye Davidson who played Ra in the film Stargate and Dil in The Crying Game. Was nominated for an oscar for the latter role but after Stargate quit acting and went back to working in fashion.
A lot of the SNL crowd. Chris Farley, John Belushi, Phil Hartman. What?
Seriously, the one I always think about is Sarah Holcomb from Animal House and Caddyshack. The drugs and partying caught up to her, and she developed mental problems. According to rumors she’s been living quietly and has mostly gotten her act together, but her celebrity days are over.
I was all ready to contradict you when I went to IMDB and saw you were right…Day hasn’t had an acting role since 1973 when her variety show went off the air.
I think I was actually thinking of Debbie Reynolds, who does keep her hand in with TV and movie roles.
I was going to say Melinda Dillon. I don’t think I’ve seen her in anything other than “Close Encounters” and “A Christmas Story”, but according to IMDB she’s still plugging away in movies and TV, just stuff I haven’t seen. So, um, never mind.
Chris Tucker is the first one that comes to mind for me. His resume for the last 10 years is Rush Hour, Rush Hour 2 and Rush Hour 3. He’s stated that it isn’t because he can’t find work (on the contrary, he turns down work) but because he doesn’t enjoy the career and prefers to do stand up comedy, and will only make an exception to work with Jackie Chan.
There are two child actors I can think of: Peter Ostrum, who played Charlie Bucket in Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. Apparently just decided making movies wasn’t for him; now, apparently, he’s a large animal vet in the state of New York.
And of course Carrie Henn, who played Newt in Aliens. Quit acting after that one role. Today she’s a schoolteacher.