10 TV Stars Who Controversially Left Their Hit Shows

6. Steve Carell - The Office

For a time, The Office without Steve Carell as Michael Scott was scarcely worth thinking about. The show had shot his career into the stratosphere -- although he was hardly an unknown before The Office came along, it turned him into a household name. And in return, he served as its anchor, the center of The Office universe that everyone else revolved around. How could the show function without the clueless Regional Manager? What would there even be for the other Dunder Mifflin employees to react to with Michael Scott gone? But it couldn't be helped. By the time the seventh season rolled around, Steve Carell had a massively successful film career to attend to, and quite frankly the show just wasn't what it once was. So it seemed as good a time as any for Carell to walk away. And as much as the loss of Michael Scott left a vacuum in the show, his departure forced the writers to be more creative than they have been in quite some time. The scramble to find someone (or several someones) to fill his shoes actually breathed a little bit of life back into The Office, if only for a short while.