Film stars who retire

[momatt]

Then he was in the Mighty Boosh for a bit too.

[Noddy Tomkey]

Didn't Cary Grant fuck it all off too? Rightly so, he only ever acted like a nob.

[phantom_power]

Are we differentiating between "retiring from acting" and "not being offered any more roles" here?

[Ignatius_S]

William Powell is a good example – despite numerous offers to draw him out of retirement, he stuck to his guns for 30 years up to his death.

I remember watching a 'what happened to the cast of Bugsy Malone' and discovering the female star chose not to continue as an actor. The actor playing Fat Sam continued acting for a few years but think he said that he had no wish to keep playing the 'fat kid' and ended up working in construction – he look prosperous albeit not the sort of person I would want to cross in a business deal. Went to check his name and discovered he was found guilty in a corruption case: http://nypost.com/2015/12/01/ex-child-actor-who-once-played-kid-gangster-busted-in-kickback-scheme/

Gene Hackman has managed to stay away. Same with Sean Connery. Dirk Bogarde ducked out of the spotlight in his last years. Brigitte Bardot has stuck to her retirement, and never been tempted back.

Although Bogarde did stop acting, I wouldn't say he ducked out of the spotlight - he remained a very public figure continued working as a writer and often wrote newspaper articles (such as complaining when a female writer, sitting next to him, obviously didn't consider him a real writer).

A good chunk of his book writing were autobiographical works and Bogarde wasn't 100% honest when it came to his family background (IIRC, there was a good BBC documentary that included how he made his family's history a good deal grander than he actually was).

We can talk about child actors.

Deanna Durbin was a huge movie star in the forties. Her films saved Universal from bankruptcy, she was praised by Satyajit Ray or Rostropovich. Anne Frank had a picture of her in her room.
Around 1948, she was still a star as an adult, but she was fed up with the fake persona she was supposed to have as an actress, and she was afraid to be swallowed by the system, a fate rival star Judy Garland faced herself. So, she married a director she had worked with, and she lived for 65 years around Paris, reverting to her original first name, making almost zero public appearance, and granting just a couple of short interviews.

Shirley Temple gave up acting at 22, shortly after Fort Apache.

Then, Bridget Fonda or Alison Lohman basically retired to start a family after getting married.

Good examples – although Temple did try something of an acting comeback on TV several years or so later.

Yeah, they're doing it on July 18th: http://www.torontosun.com/2017/06/02/sctv-alums-dave-thomas-rick-moranis-martin-short-headline-comedy-fundraiser-in-toronto

He said in an interview last year that he hadn't actually retired, he'd just wanted to spend time with his kids but now he'd be happy to work again if the right script came along.

Also, the break that Moranis took was actually very short – I think one of the reason people think he retired or took more time off is that he didn't court publicity/get much attention in the media. I think it was in one discussion here that there were quite a few projects such as comedy albums that had a low-key release, which people didn't tend to know about.

Are we differentiating between "retiring from acting" and "not being offered any more roles" here?

I think we should but sometimes there's a bit of column a and column b – with the actor that played Charlie, which Attila mentioned, IIRC, he was offered some roles but didn't get others that he actually wanted and wasn't very keen on being an actor.