Jack Nicholson - three-time Oscar winner, cultural icon and one of the most respected actors alive - simply dropped off the map 10 years ago. I have no idea why.
The opera world has lost two giants - Placido Domingo and James Levine - due to the “Me Too” movement. Though they were let go for very legitimate reasons, their absence is palpable.
And along the same lines as Audrey Hepburn - how about Grace Kelly, who retired from acting at 26 to become a real-live princess.
Garrison Keilor retired and then was accused of groping women so I guess he won’t make a comeback.
Seal has not done anything lately except appear on the Masked Singer
Can’t recall her name but an actress quit to become a nun maybe 50 years ago. She did some movies with Elvis
Well they were all alive after they broke up for longer than they had been famous as the Beatles, so for that period of time they fit the OP.
Yeah, I think the ones who walk away at their peak are a special sub-category. When I wrote the OP, the other person I had in mind was Cat Stevens, who was one of the bigger things in music when he turned his back on it all in the 1970’s.
OK, so a couple of decades later he has to some degree returned as Yusuf Islam, and actually seems to have been reasonably busy at it - which may disqualify him from this thread.
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But ended due to injury, iirc.
Are comedians artists? This thread makes me think of Dave Chappelle who walked away at his height.
In reference to Jack Nicholson: There have been rumors that he has been ill—I have heard Parkinson’s, Alzeheimer’s, some other type of dementia–but nothing has been said or confirmed by Nicholson himself or someone representing him.
Watterson was the first one I thought of. I’ve always been torn about his retirement - I would have loved to have C&H run for many more years, but I think he did the right thing by going out on top and not running the strip long past the point where he had anything new or interesting to say.
If this were 70 years ago, I"d have said Sibelius and EM Forster, but they both felt they’d had little or nothing new to say since the 1920s, so maybe it isn’t such a loss when a creative decides they’re just not that creative any more.
Always leave them wanting more…
Steve Martin, part of nearly anybody’s Mt. Rushmore of comedy, has largely phased out his comedy career in favor of his musical career. I love his albums with the Steep Canyon Rangers. His collaborations with Edie Brickell are defining the term “diminishing returns,” though (I thought their “Bright Star” soundtrack was kind of unlistenable). He can do what he wants, but comedy is what he does better than just about anybody.
Flavor Flav, actually an incredibly talented musician (self-taught pianist who can play 12 instruments) and the creative force behind Public Enemy. The reality show parody he’s now become is the result of years of drug abuse and personal issues.
Speaking of that, what about Bill Cosby?
Jason Becker.
Jason Becker was a gifted teenage guitarist, a shredder with impeccable chops who could also compose and arrange music. He released two albums with his high school friend Marty Friedman (most known for his 10 year stint as the lead guitarist for Megadeth) as Cacophony, released a solo album and then played for David Lee Roth on his 2nd album, A Little Ain’t Enough, which was recorded in 1990. He gave clinics, made instructional videos tapes and performed live many times, all while still a teenager.
And here’s a couple of minutes of him performing solo on stage in Japan.
However, while recording DLR’s album, Mr. Becker was diagnosed as having ALS. He was unable to tour to support the DLR album: he simply was unable to play the guitar parts he himself had written and recorded. By 1996 he had lost the ability to speak, communicating with a system his father developed that uses eye movements to spell out words. He continued to compose with the aid of a computer and some systems that friends and others created for him and has actually released some albums which include older archived material as well as a handful of new compositions.
Mr. Becker is revered in guitar circles and in heavy metal lore. He is well-thought of by his old bandmates and friends and they have several times lent a hand to help him pay his medical expenses and to make sure that he and his mother (his father passed away some years ago now) have a place to live, etc.
Mr. Becker is also, following the death of physicist Stephen Hawking, the longest surviving ALS patient in history, having lived almost 30 years with the disease now.
But the world lost nearly all of the creative output that this brilliant young man would have had as ALS robbed him of his abilities at just 20 years old.
Berke Breathed quit working after Bloom County at age 32. Then he did Outland and Opus and quit after both of those. He started up Bloom County online in 2015 and he said Trump inspired him to return to Bloom County. He’s 63 now.
Al Franken was lost in the Me Too movement as well (I’m thinking more of his books as art, versus SNL’s Stuart)
A good entry, but I think he was lost to politics long before Me Too caught up to him.
Are politicians artists?
Sure, BS.
If you really want to time travel… how about Rossini?