Child stars are incredibly important to Hollywood. While some use their careers as children to catapult their careers as adults, others decide that having a successful acting career as a child is enough. Those who decide to end their time in Hollywood while they’re still young go on to have careers and thrive in other industries — they become normal people with an incredibly interesting story of how they started their lives.
Angus T. Jones
Angus T. Jones was most known for his role as Jake Harper on Two and a Half Men. According to ScreenRant, there was a point at which he was the highest-paid child actor on television, making $300,000 an episode. He was on the show for ten years from 2003 to 2013, and also appeared in a number of movies like The Rookie.
Angus left the show after season 10 because it conflicted with his newfound religious faith, and even encouraged people to stop watching the show. Eventually, he decided that he was going to quit acting for good. According to ScreenRant, he’s only had one onscreen appearance since 2016, where he played himself in an episode of Bookie, a comedy created by Chuck Lorre, who also created Two and a Half Men.
Jennette McCurdy
Jennette McCurdy was a child star for nearly all of her childhood. She first entered Hollywood when she was just eight years old. Most known for her role as Sam Puckett on the hit Nickelodeon show, iCarly, Jennette was a staple on Nickelodeon. While she took on more projects at Nickelodeon and other ventures, she quit acting for good in 2018 when she was 25 years old. She admitted she quit because she was “ashamed,” “Unfulfilled,” and “embarrassed” by her work in the past, and wanted to move on.
Peter Ostrum
Most of us know Pete Ostrum as Charlie in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, where he starred alongside Gene Wilder in the 1971 film. While he enjoyed making the movie, he declined to make any others and quit being a child star before it really took off. He said, “I had a great experience making Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, but I don’t know that I fell in love with acting, per se.” Peter left the industry and decided to become a dairy veterinarian instead, where he has a successful and thriving career.
Mara Wilson
Most of us know Mara Wilson for playing the titular character in Matilda, as well as her debut in Mrs. Doubtfire. While the start of her career as a child star was a great one, things went south quickly for her. According to NPR, when she was filming Thomas and the Magic Railroad in 2000, she had an awful experience in which she was told to stop acting because she had hit puberty.
She said, “I came to set one day after a few months away, and people were kind of giving each other worried looks. … And 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.”
These days, she’s thriving as a journalist, author, and playwright.
Jason Zimbler
Jason Zimbler is most known for his role as Ferguson W. Darling on Clarissa Explains It All. Despite having a successful career as a child star, especially playing the brother of Melissa Joan Hart’s character, he decided to leave Hollywood. He went to Notre Dame and worked in the theater industry as a director and a producer. He then went on to become a software engineer at HBO, according to The Sun.
Kay Panabaker
Kay Panabaker was a huge child star on the Disney Channel through the 2000s and early 2010s. She appeared in a number of Disney Channel Original Movies, as well as a handful of Disney Channel shows. While she was such a successful child star, she ultimately made the decision in 2011 that she wanted to quit acting and leave Hollywood for good. She went to school, and in 2016, she became a zookeeper at Animal Kingdom in Disney World. She might have quit acting, but she didn’t stray too far from Disney completely.
Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple was the ultimate child star. She first got her start in acting when she was just three years old. While she passed away in 2014, she had a successful career even after quitting Hollywood when she was 21 years old. She went in a completely different direction, as she went on to pursue a political career instead. She ran for Congress in 1967 and ultimately lost; however, she went on to serve as a U.S. ambassador to Czechoslovakia.
Ross Bagley
Ross Bagley is most known for playing Buckwheat in The Little Rascals, as well as Nicky Banks in the last two seasons of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He also acted alongside Will Smith in Independence Day. He took quite a long hiatus from any major projects, only coming back for an episode of Judging Amy in 2004 and then two movies, Gnome Alone and Dead Ringer, in 2015. Eventually, at 24 years old, he hasn’t acted since.
According to Looper, he went to college at California State University, Northridge. After graduating, he became a realtor in California. Additionally, she also DJs on the side as DJ Ro$$y B.
Charlie Korsmo
Charlie Korsmo is most known for playing Jack Banning in Hook. He took a hiatus from acting for ten years before he filmed his last movie, Can’t Hardly Wait. He was 19 years old at the time and decided to walk away from acting. He attended MIT to study physics. He worked in Washington, DC, for a few years before attending Yale to pursue a law degree. He then went on to become a professor of corporate law and corporate finance at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland.
Taran Noah Smith
Taran Noah Smith was a child star most known for playing Mark Taylor in Home Improvement. Once the show ended in 1999, Taran was 16 at the time, and he decided to end his career with Hollywood and move on. According to EW, he’s been very busy since he stopped acting, as he started a vegan food company, made installation art for events like Coachella, and built energy-efficient water purifiers for the military.
