In late 2020, the world lost one of its greatest stars, Sean Connery, at age 90. Connery had been long since retired but in that seventeen-year period audiences hoped he would return for one last movie but, unfortunately, he never did.
Unlike Connery, most actors try to work until the grave, but others, who are financially stable, decide to put the fame and fortune aside and retire from Hollywood. Despite how great it must be to be in movies, like any other job, people get tired of it. In recent years, retired actor Joe Pesci has made something of a comeback, and here are 10 retired stars we would love to see do the same.
10 Robert Redford
Robert Redford was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars appearing in classic after classic, like Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and All The Presidents Men. Redford even directed and has long been a proponent of independent film, starting the Sundance Film Festival in 1984.
In 2018, he announced his retirement from acting calling The Old Man and The Gun, where he played an aging bank robber, his final film. The film received positive reviews and earned Redford a Golden Globe nomination. However, his last film actually would be 2019’s Avengers: Endgame where he briefly reprised his role from Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
9 Bridget Fonda
Bridget Fonda was a rising star in the 1990s, starring in Single White Female, Point Of No Return, and Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown. She showed promise as an exciting young talent. However, her star power started to fade, especially after she turned down the role of Ally McBeal in the classic TV show.
Her last role was a 2002 made for TV movie, Snow Queen. In 2003, she married Batman film composer Danny Elfman and retired to raise their family.
8 Phoebe Cates
After making classics like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the Gremlins movies, and Drop Dead Fred, Phoebe Cates retired from acting in 1994 at age 31. She had married actor Kevin Kline and retired to raise their two children.
She briefly returned to movies with the 2001 film The Anniversary Party and has since only had one voice-over role, reprising her Gremlins part for the video game Lego Dimensions. In addition to raising her family, she opened up a boutique called “Blue Tree.”
7 Rick Moranis
With movies like Ghostbusters and Spaceballs, Rick Moranis became a comedy icon. However, following his wife’s death in 1991, Moranis started to make fewer and fewer films to better raise his children, explaining, “I’m a single parent and I just found that it was too difficult to manage to raise my kids and to do the traveling involved in making movies. So I took a bit of a break. And the little bit of a break turned into a longer break, and then I found that I really didn’t miss it.”
Recently, Moranis signed onto Shrunk, a new sequel in the Honey, I Shrunk The Kids franchise, making it his first live-action role since 1997. It is unknown the size of his role but hopefully, this means he might return for more films.
6 Cameron Diaz
Cameron Diaz burst onto the scene in The Mask before making comedy classics like There’s Something About Mary and indie masterpieces like Being John Malkovich. She’s found success in many genres however decided to unexpectedly retire in 2014 after the release of the musical Annie.
She later confirmed her retirement in 2017 stating that she became tired of traveling for movies. She has since released several health-related books, her most recent being The Longevity Book: The Science Of Aging, The Biology Of Strength, and the Privilege of Time.
5 Daniel Day-Lewis
Critics and audiences consider Daniel Day-Lewis one of the world’s greatest actors. All his performances receive critical acclaim and this is partly because Day-Lewis is very selective about the movies he makes. He has actually made very few films, putting his all into the ones he does make. Day-Lewis briefly retired from acting in 1998 and actually became a wood-worker and studied shoe-making. However, he returned to make Gangs of New York.
In 2017, Day-Lewis announced his retirement and that Phantom Thread would be his final film. Since he has come back from retirement before, audiences hope he does so again.
4 Gene Hackman
Gene Hackman has starred in many classics such as The Conversation, The French Connection, Superman, and a host of others. However, now 90, the prolific actor hasn’t made a movie since 2004’s flop Welcome To Mooseport.
He surprised everyone in a 2004 Larry King interview when he stated he had no film projects lined up. He has since written books and confirmed his acting retirement. Despite his advanced age, movie fans would love to see him in one more movie, just so his last movie isn’t Welcome To Mooseport.
3 Sidney Poitier
Sidney Poitier not only gave some of the greatest performances of all time in movies like Lilies Of The Field, In The Heat Of The Night, and Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, but also broke ground as an African-American leading man in Hollywood.
However, he hasn’t made a movie since 1997’s Bruce Willis thriller The Jackal. That same year he became the ambassador of the Bahamas to Japan. Now, at age 93, he’s the oldest living man to have won an Oscar and seems to be enjoying retirement.
2 George Lucas
George Lucas has had a complicated history with Hollywood. While he made classics like the original Star Wars and contributed to Indiana Jones’s creation, his subsequent work such as the Star Wars prequels and Indiana Jones 4 were much derided. His changes to the original Star Wars trilogy were met with anger and his efforts as a producer of such films as Howard The Duck and Strange Magic didn’t fare well.
In 2012, Lucas announced his retirement from big blockbusters to focus on small independent films instead, however, no such films have been made. It would be great to see a smaller-scale film from Lucas that doesn’t rely on CGI and instead his creative ingenuity, like in the vein of his pre-Star Wars movies, THX 1138 and American Graffiti.
1 Jack Nicholson
Another actor considered one of the world’s greatest is Jack Nicholson. He’s perhaps starred in more classics than anyone, however, he hasn’t made a movie since 2010’s How Do You Know. It was a supporting role he did as a favor for his As Good As It Gets director James L. Brooks after Bill Murray dropped out.
His last leading role was 2007’s The Bucket List. Nicholson still makes Laker game appearances, but many rumors have circulated about his failing mental facilities contributing to his retirement from acting, due to him being supposedly no longer able to memorize lines. However, in 2017, it looked like Nicholson was finally going to return to movies with the English-language remake of Toni Erdmann opposite Kristin Wiig. Unfortunately, he ultimately dropped out of the movie. At 83, audiences hope Nicholson has at least one more performance left in him to give.
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