Yahoo News 7 stars who said they were retiring – and stuck to it
It can be fairly common for an actor to say they've retired, only for a great role (or a great paycheque) to draw them back to Hollywood.
Sometimes they haven't even retired yet before they announce that they aren't retiring anymore – such as Robert Redford, who recently admitted that "it was a mistake" to describe his upcoming movie, The Old Man & the Gun, as his "last film".
But every now and then, an actor announces their retirement and sticks with it. Here are seven such examples who hung up their boots and never looked back.
1. Gene Hackman
Last role: Welcome to Mooseport (2004)
It took a while for Gene Hackman to confirm that he was retired after his final on-screen role, but he did so in 2008 as he was promoting his third novel, Escape from Andersonville.
"I haven't held a press conference to announce retirement, but yes, I'm not going to act any longer. I've been told not to say that over the last few years, in case some real wonderful part comes up, but I really don't want to do it any longer," he told Reuters.
Hackman has narrated a couple of TV documentaries since, but it seems it'll take a very specific set of circumstances to get him to come back. When GQ asked, he said, "If I could do it in my own house, maybe, without them disturbing anything and just one or two people."
2. Cameron Diaz
Last role: Annie (2014)
We're not ruling out the return of Cameron Diaz to the big screen as she only stepped down fairly recently, but she's definitely retired for now.
She revealed at the Goop Wellness Summit in 2017 that part of the decision came from the travelling she had to do for her acting roles. "I just went, 'I can't really say who I am to myself.' Which is a hard thing to face up to. I felt the need to make myself whole," she noted.
And in a reunion for The Sweetest Thing earlier this year, Diaz confirmed her retirement. "I'm totally down. I'm semi-retired, too, and I am actually retired, so I would love to see you ladies," she explained, although she added that she would come out of retirement for a sequel to The Sweetest Thing.
3. Rick Moranis
Last role: Brother Bear 2 (2006)
Until 2015, it was assumed that Rick Moranis had retired from acting in the late 1990s. Officially, animation Brother Bear 2 was his last role, but if we're talking live-action appearances, you'd have to go back to Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves in 1997 – six years after he was widowed.
"I'm a single parent, and I just found that it was too difficult to manage raising my kids and doing the traveling involved in making movies. So I took a little 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," he told USA Today.
However, Moranis has clarified his stance and may not be as retired as we thought he was. "I'm interested in anything that I would find interesting and as soon as one comes along that piques my interest, I'll probably do it," he explained to The Hollywood Reporter – so maybe we shouldn't rule him out just yet.
4. Sean Connery
Last role: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
Although he voiced a role in 2012's Sir Billi, Sean Connery officially announced his retirement in 2006 when he received the American Film Institute's lifetime achievement award. Not a bad time to do it.
It followed surgery to have a kidney tumour removed and since his retirement, not even the prospect of reprising his Indiana Jones role as Dr Henry Jones could change his mind. "If anything could have pulled me out of retirement, it would have been an Indiana Jones film. But in the end, retirement is just too damned much fun," he said in 2007.
To be fair to Connery, that movie turned out to be Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, so he might have made the right choice there...
5. Cary Grant
Last role: Walk, Don't Run (1966)
After a career as one of Hollywood's greatest ever leading men , Cary Grant retired at the age of 62 and not even a role in Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain (1966) could change his mind.
It's said that Grant decided to retire after he found it hard to get scripts that he approved of and he felt that the 'Golden Age' of Hollywood was over. "I could have gone on acting and playing a grandfather or a bum, but I discovered more important things in life," he explained of the decision.
Those "more important things" included the birth of his daughter Jennifer, so you can't really blame him for that.
6. Daniel Day-Lewis
Last role: Phantom Thread (2017)
We've been here before with Daniel Day-Lewis, who said he was taking a long break after 1997's The Boxer only to return five years later with Gangs of New York.
But he's now retired again following the release of last year's Phantom Thread and, for now, he looks to be sticking by it. "Before making the film, I didn't know I was going to stop acting," Day-Lewis reflected before the movie was released.
Of his statement that announced he was retiring, he added: "I did want to draw a line. I didn't want to get sucked back into another project. All my life, I've mouthed off about how I should stop acting, and I don't know why it was different this time, but the impulse to quit took root in me, and that became a compulsion. It was something I had to do."
We'll see if that holds out...
7. Doris Day
Last role: With Six You Get Eggroll (1968)
After her final big-screen role in romantic comedy With Six You Get Eggroll, Doris Day largely retired from acting, aside from TV roles in The Doris Day Show until 1973 and a short-lived TV series, Doris Day's Best Friends in the mid-1980s.
In an interview with NPR, she said the decision was partly down to wanting a quieter life than Hollywood could offer. "I came out to Carmel [California] and it was so nice, and I have so many doggies. And I thought that this would really be nice," she reflected.
Following her retirement, Day took an active role in animal welfare, co-founding Actors and Others for Animals in 1971 and later establishing the Doris Day Pet Foundation, now know as the Doris Day Animal Foundation.
She's 96 now, but that needn't rule out a comeback – Eli Wallach was still acting at 98, and you'll be able to see 92-year old Dick Van Dyke shortly in Mary Poppins Returns.
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