9 Celebrities Who Walked Away From The Money And The Fame
#1 Garth Brooks
Over the last several years, Brooks has gone back and forth with the late Elvis Presley as the best-selling solo artist in U.S. history. Not bad for a guy who took most of the 2000s off from touring, has spent spring training with several major league baseball teams and once disappeared into an unfortunate alter-ego as a rock singer called Chris Gaines. He eventually came out of retirement in 2009 for a five-year residency at a casino on the Las Vegas Strip.
#2 Lauryn Hill
Unlike the waves of hip-hop artists who have briefly "retired," only to return within weeks (or days), Ms. Hill took her long hiatus seriously, much to our dismay. Despite a few one-off performances an MTV Unplugged special in 2001 here, a Fugees reunion in 2004 there Hill basically took herself out of circulation for a good portion of the Aughts. "I had to step away when I realized that for the sake of the machine, I was being way too compromised," she later explained. She started gradually returning to performing, including a triumphant return to New York City in 2012.
#3 Fred Neil
One of the weightiest talents to emerge from the Greenwich Village folk scene, the songwriter behind the classic Midnight Cowboy song "Everybody's Talkin'" left music behind in the early Seventies to co-found the Dolphin Research Project. Which gave his other best-known song, the much-covered "The Dolphins," that much more depth.
#4 Tom Lehrer
Most of us know Tom Lehrer as the crack satirist-songwriter of the Fifties and Sixties, responsible for such witty ditties as "Be Prepared," "The Vatican Rag," and "We Will All Go Together When We Go." Just don't wait for him to return to performing any time soon; he retired from singing and tickling the ivories in the early Seventies, dedicating his life to higher learning. The 86-year-old former math professor taught his last class at U.C. Santa Cruz in 2001, on ironically the concept of infinity.
#5 Greta Garbo
Nearly 75 years after she turned her back on the movie industry that made her a superstar, she's still the pinup girl for premature retirement. Wanting to be alone was a running theme through her films, so it made sense that, after doing Two-Faced Woman (1941), Garbo walked away from show business. Later in life, she insisted she never actually said "I want to be alone" in regards to her private life: "I only said, ‘I want to be let alone.' There is a world of difference."
#6 Terrence Malick
We take it for granted now that the Texas-based filmmaker releases movies on a regular basis and seems to be working on several projects at any given time but from 1978 to 1998, Terrence Malick was completely M.I.A. After finishing his second film Days of Heaven, Malick removed himself from the Hollywood rat race; depending on who you talk to, he then spent two decades writing prospective screenplays, living in Paris, possibly teaching, or simply sat around bird-watching for weeks on end. He's refused to do interviews since returning to filmmaking with The Thin Red Line in 1998, so no definite answer has been given. We're just ecstatic to have him back.
#7 Captain Beefheart
After two decades making some of the strangest, most uncompromising music in rock, the artist who answered to Captain Beefheart declared that he'd gotten "too good" at the various horns he played. So Don Van Vliet quit the music business after his finishing his 1982 album Ice Cream for Crow, and took up painting full-time until his passing in 2010. "The stars are matter, we're matter, but it doesn't matter," he once said.
#8 Bill Withers
The soul singer had a string of hits in the Seventies, but after releasing his last album in 1985, Bill Withers walked away. Fans had hoped the success of the 2009 documentary "Still Bill" might convince the man behind "Lean on Me," "Grandma's Hands" and a long list of excellent songs to show some interest in touring, as he had not for decades. No such luck.
#9 Gene Wilder
The recent anniversary revival of Blazing Saddles reminded movie fans all over again of the impish appeal of Wilder, who also starred in The Producers, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and Young Frankenstein. After appearing with Richard Pryor in their final film together, 1991's Another You, Wilder effectively retired from working in Hollywood; other than a few TV movies and two appearances on the show Will & Grace, he's been content to stay offscreen. It's not that he wouldn't act on a regular basis; he just doesn't get good scripts anymore.
