After numerous announcements and subsequent backtracking: Michael Caine (90) is finally retiring from acting. The British character actor announced this in an interview with the BBC. His current film “The Great Escaper” will also be his last. He received good reviews for the lead role of a man who flies out of the nursing home to attend a veterans meeting, so he said he could now quit with peace of mind. Michael Caine isn’t the only actor who has turned his back on Hollywood in recent years.
Bruce Willis (68) has a sad reason for withdrawing from the film business. The “Die Hard” star suffers from the speech disorder aphasia and frontotemporal dementia. Willis’ family therefore announced the end of his career in March 2022.
Health reasons are also said to be the cause of Jack Nicholson’s (86) silent disappearance from show business. The three-time Oscar winner is rumored to be suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Nicholson never officially retired. His last film, “How do you know it’s love,” came from 2010. There were rumors that he was making a US remake of the German hit “Toni Erdmann,” but the project fell apart.
After his long battle with Parkinson’s disease, Michael J. Fox (62) gave up his acting career in 2020. Among other things, he can no longer remember long texts and cannot speak reliably, said the “Back to the Future” star. In 2023, Michael J. Fox appeared in front of the camera again, but only for the documentary “Still” about his life with Parkinson’s.
Gene Hackman (93) made his last appearance in “Welcome to Mooseport” almost twenty years ago. In 2008, the character actor officially announced his retirement from Hollywood. Unlike many colleagues, he stuck to this threat. The two-time Oscar winner has now built a second career as a writer.
Robert Redford (87) explained his film “A Crook” in 2018
Daniel Day-Lewis (66) took early retirement in 2017. The exceptional British-Irish actor received his sixth and presumably last Oscar nomination for “The Silk Thread”. During his career, the eccentric mime repeatedly made himself rare, for example in order to train as a shoemaker in Florence. Eventually he pulled the ripcord because his extreme immersion in his roles was increasingly draining him.
Eva Mendes (49) also quietly withdrew from Hollywood. In 2014 she last appeared in front of the camera for “Lost River”, the directorial debut of her partner Ryan Gosling (42). Since then, she has focused primarily on their two daughters, who were born in 2014 and 2016.
