Growing up as a child, in general, is difficult enough, but this stress becomes amplified to 11 for the life of a child actor. Just imagine the constant, average anxieties that come with growing up, and it only gets worse when placed at the center of invasive tabloids and paparazzi mobbings.
It's no surprise why so many child stars have suffered horrible mental breakdowns, or turned to drug addiction or crime, either during or post-fame. However, there are some child stars who were smart enough to get out early and, years later, turned out all the better for it.
10 Lisa Jakub
As revealed in a blog post (which has since been deleted), Lisa Jakub actually left Hollywood after experiencing enough stress that she worried she'd become a "cautionary tale."
She could have easily ridden the coattails of movie stardom after appearing in Mrs. Doubtfire and Independence Day, but instead, she left it in her rearview mirror to pursue a business degree. Now, she runs a blog and podcast - Embrace Your Weird - all about overcoming anxiety and depression. She also works as a writer and yoga instructor.
9 Ross Bagley
You may recognize Ross Bagley either from playing Buckwheat in The Little Rascals, Will Smith's son in Independence Day, or Will Smith's baby brother during the latter seasons of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
He seemed to be on the rise at the time, but for some reason, his career abruptly ended and he left the limelight to pursue a normal life. In 2012, he graduated from California State University before accepting an internship at Overbrook Entertainment. Yes, that's the same Overbrook Entertainment owned by Jada Pinkett and Will Smith.
8 Amy O'Neill
Amy O'Neill looked as if she was off to the races when she landed the role of Amy Szalinski in the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids franchise. But because she received one too many scripts featuring nudity in her newfound fame, she threw it all away and decided she'd rather be off to the circus.
She met up with old friend Roy Johns - a circus act owner - and started traveling the world with him as a part of the Girls on Stilts act from Hollywood, Alabama.
7 Jason Zimbler
Jason Zimbler found popularity by playing Ferguson W. Darling on the hit show Clarissa Explains It All. The show ended after three seasons and Zimbler disappeared from television screens after that.
He has zero acting credits after the show because he opted to go to college for a Business Administration degree instead, which he used to become a software engineer. He actually has been engineering for HBO ever since 2011. Besides this, he runs a support group for former child stars who fell on hard times, called Been There, Done That.
6 Charlie Korsmo
When he quit acting in 1998 after starring in Can't Hardly Wait, Charlie Korsmo was already carving a path for himself for a major breakout. He was already in a bevy of high profile roles, appearing in Dick Tracy, then in What About Bob? before playing Peter Pan's son in Hook.
What happened instead was he earned a law degree from Yale. In 2011, that degree helped him earn a personal nomination from then-President Barack Obama to the Board of Trustees of the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation.
5 Danny Lloyd
Fans of The Shining may be wondering whatever happened to the original Danny Torrance when Ewan McGregor took over the reins of the character for the recent sequel, Doctor Sleep. The truth is that Danny Lloyd retired from acting at the age of 10, shortly after the film's release. Truthfully, when we hear about everything Stanley Kubrick put his actors through on set, we get why Lloyd might have soured on acting afterward.
Fear not, as he found a new life as a biology professor in Kentucky. He even had a brief cameo in Doctor Sleep, his first (and likely last) acting role in nearly 40 years.
4 Peter Ostrum
Peter Ostrum literally hit the jackpot when he was cast as Charlie alongside comedy legend Gene Wilder in the instant classic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Most children would be chomping at the bit for such a star-making role, but as soon as he became a star, Ostrum left the Hollywood factory.
The 1971 movie turned out to be his first and only movie role, as Ostrum moved on to pursue a degree in veterinary medicine. He now lives as a vet in New York with his wife and children.
3 Josh Saviano
Josh Saviano played everyone's favorite TV best friends for years on The Wonder Years, but when those years were up, so was his time as an actor. Save for a couple of episodes of Law & Order in 2014, the former Paul Pfeiffer stopped acting when his show stopped running in 1993.
Instead, he had much loftier ambitions of going to college and becoming a lawyer. After leaving the Morrison Cohen, LLP law firm in 2015, he started up his own law firm - JDS Legal - along with a celebrity consulting brand - Act 3 Advisors.
2 Jeff Cohen
Jeff Cohen's exit from Hollywood was more so out of necessity than by choice. "It was terrible. My first love was acting, but puberty had other ideas," The Goonies star explained to The Daily Mail, Apparently, when the former Chunk started losing his "fat kid" weight, he couldn't get any work because Hollywood only offered him "fat kid" roles. "It was a forced retirement. I didn't give up acting. Acting gave me up."
Luckily, he was able to have a second career in law. He is now the founding attorney of his own law firm, Cohen & Gardner, LLP.
1 Mara Wilson
In the year 2000 at the age of 13, Mara Wilson decided to walk away from acting because, as she told People Magazine, the pressures of being in "toxic" Hollywood became too large for her to bare.
The Matilda star started anew, becoming a writer and journalist. Now a bestselling author, she lived a calm, stable life long enough to only dabble with acting again in small portions in more recent years, namely with cameos in Broad City, Bojack Horseman, and Welcome to Night Vale.