9 Actors Who've Threatened to Quit Acting

Viggo Mortensen

"In the past week I've been from Los Angeles to Japan to Korea to Poland to the UK," Mortensen complained to The Times last spring. "It's ridiculous and it's not a healthy way to be. But, as it happens, I'm taking measures to change that. No more movies. I haven't said yes to one in over a year. I've been in all these well-received movies and it seems like I should be doing some more, but there's other things I want to do."

VERDICT: Mortensen spent much of 2009 reiterating that claim -- then signed on to star in David Cronenberg's The Talking Cure, opposite Keira Knightley. He's also expected to reteam with Cronenberg soon for a sequel to Eastern Promises.

Amanda Bynes

"I've never written the movies & tv shows I've been apart of I've only acted like the characters the producers or directors wanted me to play," Bynes tweeted almost two weeks ago. "Being an actress isn't as fun as it may seem. If I don't love something anymore I stop doing it...I don't love acting anymore so I've stopped doing it. I know 24 is a young age to retire but you heard it here first I've #retired."

VERDICT: Despite a report in The Daily Beast that says Bynes was fired from her new movie Hall Pass for being a paranoid wreck, she tweeted this past weekend, "I'm happier than ever."

Robert Downey Jr.

"I have no set plans for my future," Downey Jr. told EW last November. "I've never had it this good -- this is my day in the sun -- and I certainly don't want to look a gift horse in the molars. But [my wife] Susan and I want to begin to be in our lives as much as we are in our jobs. I'd love just to sit here and say, 'What movie's playing tonight?' I'd love to finish the new book about D-day I'm reading. I love painting, I love music...I can only be a guy on a call sheet probably, I don't know, maybe a couple more times."

VERDICT: If he was telling the truth, he's sure in a hurry to cash in those last few chips: Downey Jr. is currently set for a ton of upcoming movies, including Due Date, Sherlock Holmes 2, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Yucatan, Gravity, and The Great and Powerful Oz.

Emma Watson

"There's not, like, a burning passion in me that I have to act and I don't care what I do," the Harry Potter star recently told Teen Vogue. "Until something comes along that I feel as strongly about as I did Hermione -- like, I felt that it was life or death -- I don't want to act again."

VERDICT: Since she gave the interview, Watson booked her first major, post-Potter role: the female lead in Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Life-or-death decisions are apparently not that hard to come by.

Nicole Kidman

"I have to say I'm not that interested in making films any more," Kidman told the Telegraph in December 2008. "I know I'm not meant to say that, but that's where it is for me now. I'm 41 years old and very happy being in Tennessee with my baby and with my husband.I obviously have creative blood in me and it needs to come out in some way but I just don't have that burning desire any more."

VERDICT: Apparently, making an Adam Sandler movie can relight an actor's flame. Kidman will appear in his upcoming Just Go With It, and she also has Rabbit Hole, Hemingway & Gellhorn, The Danish Girl and Trespass on the way.

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