10 TV Shows That Made Actors QUIT The Industry
2. Game Of Thrones - Jack Gleeson
In his late teens, Jack Gleeson became an overnight acting sensation due to his superbly sniveling performance as Game of Thrones' thoroughly detestable Joffrey Baratheon.
Even before his stint on the show ended in 2014, Gleeson expressed a desire to retire from screen acting once his work on Thrones was finished, and indeed, that's pretty much exactly what he did.
Shortly after his run was over, he firmly stated that the success of working on Game of Thrones fundamentally changed his relationship with acting:
"I've been acting since age eight. I just stopped enjoying it as much as I used to. And now there's the prospect of doing it for a living, whereas up until now it was always something I did for recreation with my friends, or in the summer for some fun. I enjoyed it. When you make a living from something, it changes your relationship with it. It's not like I hate it, it's just not what I want to do."
In the eight years since, Gleeson has largely stuck to acting in comedy and theatre shows away from the screen, though did more recently appear in two episodes of the comedy series Out of Her Mind, and will play a supporting part in the new Liam Neeson thriller In the Land of Saints and Sinners.
Even so, it appears that Gleeson remains more-or-less out of the Hollywood game, and thanks to his lucrative run on Game of Thrones he evidently doesn't need to keep acting.