Yahoo Lifestyle 14 Celebrities Who Had Enough Of The High Life And Moved Back To Their Hometowns
Los Angeles isn't called the Entertainment Capital of the World for nothing. It's filled with people chasing their dreams and living them, but sometimes, performers decide they'd be happier back home.
Here are 14 celebrities who ditched Hollywood for their hometowns:
1.Chad Michael Murray left Buffalo, NY in 1999, but he bought a house and moved back home over the holidays in 2024.
He told Interview Magazine, "I’m excited. I go full Clark Griswold, and so I’ve got some plans ready for the kids. I typically take decorating all into my own hands. 99% of it is going to be me, but this year I did have to call someone to put lights on the house because I’m not there to do it. But as soon as I hit the ground, I’ll be up and running. We go big...Do you want to know the best part? It was my wife’s idea."
2.After traveling home to Austin, Texas to support his mom and brothers during a family crisis, Matthew McConaughey decided to move back, with his wife, Camila Alves McConaughey, in 2014.
As the couple told Southern Living, during the weeks they spent in Austin, Camila noticed a change in her husband. On a drive back from seeing his mom, she said, "You want to move here, don’t you?”
Matthew replied, "Yep." Camila said, "You son of a bitch," but then she decided, "Let’s do it."
3.In 2024, Glen Powell decided to take Matthew McConaughey's advice and move home to Austin, Texas to be close to his family and finish college after dropping out more than 15 years ago.
He told The Hollywood Reporter, "He's like, 'Hollywood is the Matrix, man. You plug in, and it's all fake world.' He's like, 'Then I go to Austin, and I unplug. It's all real. Those are my friends, that's my family, my actions matter there.' And he's right. If you're here, you live in the Matrix all the time, there's no separation of those worlds. And for me, especially as my parents get older and my niece and nephew are growing up, I want a separation of those worlds."
4.In 2020, at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Pamela Anderson relocated to Vancouver Island, British Columbia with her two adult sons, purchased and renovated her grandma's motel, and began working on her grandpa's garden.
She told Better Homes & Gardens, "A few years back, I kind of gave up at some point and needed a change. I thought, 'Well, I guess that’s just what people think of me.' I was not in a good space when I moved back to Canada. I don’t know what happened over the last few decades, but I feel now so far removed from the image of who I was. I felt very sad and lonely. I didn’t feel just misunderstood, I felt like I had really screwed up, that my whole life was a bundle of mistakes. I was hard on myself, and I thought I put my family through a lot and put my kids through so much. I came to a point where I decided to move home and disappear and get into my garden. And when I started building the garden, it was really like a metaphor of putting my life back together. I began planting seeds, and the smallest things became really profound."
5.Jack Harlow moved home to Louisville, Kentucky in 2023.
On Instagram, he said, "Thank u for allowing me to reset this year. I moved back to Kentucky and gave u an album I could not have made on the road. Surrounded by family & childhood friends this has been one of the happiest years of my life."
6.Michael Sheen moved back to Port Talbot, Wales in 2018. He first began considering relocation seven years prior when he played Jesus in a local three-day-long performance of the Passion alongside residents who were dealing with the increasing cost of living and job losses.
He told the Sunday Times, "Once you become aware of difficulties in the area you come from, you don't have to do anything. You can live somewhere else, visit family at Christmas, and turn a blind eye to injustice. It doesn't make you a bad person, but I'd seen something I couldn't unsee. I had to apply myself, and I might not have the impact I'd like, but the one thing that I can say is that I'm doing stuff. I know I am — I'm paying for it!"
7.Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Nikki Glaser planned to move to NYC, but she decided to move back home with her parents in Des Peres, Missouri, just outside St. Louis. She documented the experience on the reality show Welcome Home Nikki Glaser?.
She told Kirkwood City Lifestyle, "Turns out pandemics don't blow over. I'm still here. It's been awesome. I'm here by choice. I want to be with my family."
She later moved into her own apartment with her best friend, Andrew Collins.
8.Twenty One Pilots drummer Josh Dun moved back to Columbus, Ohio with his wife, Debby Ryan, in 2021.
As the couple told Architectural Digest, they decided to move during a trip to spend the holidays with his family. They'd been looking to buy a house, and Debby said, "Let’s move to Columbus." Coincidentally, the perfect home for them was newly listed.
9.Since 2014, Chris Evans has largely lived in Massachusetts, where he has a house outside Boston.
He told GQ, "[Returning there] takes me back to a place when life was not just simpler — that’s too reductive — but to a time where I was more pure, I guess; where my ego and my insecurities weren’t such a dominant force that I had to push against."
Chris's 2023 wedding to Alba Baptisa was reportedly held in his Massachusetts home, per Page Six.
10.For Aaron Paul, growing up in Idaho was "amazing," but he "kind of took it for granted when [he] was being raised there." Now, he has a house in Boise and a lakeside cabin two hours away in McCall.
He told Men's Journal, "The whole time I'm living this dream life in the wilderness and I'm thinking, 'God, I just can't wait to get out of here.' I had something I was chasing, but the more time I spend away from there, the more I miss it...Now that we have a place there in Idaho, we spend more time in Idaho then we do in L.A., when I'm not working at least."
11.Jeff Daniels — who's married to his childhood sweetheart, Kathleen Treado — moved back to Chelsea, Michigan in 1986.
He told The Off Camera Show, "I never bought whatever you had to do in LA to sustain a movie career, which included going to parties and introducing yourself to producers, going to other people's premieres just to be seen. I could not do that, would not do that.
I honestly didn't think the career would last. I was a fatalist, and part of it was, when you're from the Midwest, you have a really good bullshit detector. There's not a simplicity to them, but there's an honesty — 'Why don't you get to the point? Quit trying to impress me.' So that was entrenched in me.
Add to New York, ten years off-Broadway, when we are not actors, we are artists, and LA and movies are bupkis, I was told. And that's artistically where I grew up. So, I ain't buying what Hollywood is selling. So I just wanna be known as a really good actor. I'm a hired gun. One of the reasons was a deathly fear of that kind of Hollywood success. People crash and burn."
He also said that, in his mind, the "worst care scenario" was losing his wife and family.
12.Ian Harding moved back to Washington, D.C. with his wife, Sophie Hart, in 2021. Initially, they considered NYC, but the capital city won out because they "had a living situation ready to go in D.C., and the D.C. area is that much more affordable."
He told People, "It's been amazing that my mom can just come over, and my dad and my stepmom can come by. And because I'm not in government or politics, I get to enjoy D.C. as opposed to seeing it for the giant stress machine that it is...But I really love it, and I'm so grateful that I moved back. The feeling has been amazing."
13.Eric Stonestreet has "been living in Kansas City since Modern Family ended, basically."
In 2024, he told In Depth with Graham Bensinger, "What I realized it does is, it highlights everything great about our business — the entertainment business — and it highlights all the douchebaggery of our business. It amplifies it because I'm here, I'm dealing with people from here, and I'm going into the store and having all these authentic, real moments, and then I go to Hollywood, and it's, you know, you're reminded of some of the types of people that you deal with.
But then, you're also offered fruit on a big board. 'Would you like some lychee and kiwi, sir?' It's like, 'Oh yeah, this is what's great about Hollywood.' It's like, nobody's offered me a fruit board over at Jolly Ridge..."
He said that returning to Hollywood periodically is "more fun" than living there was.
14.And finally, Blake Shelton reportedly lives on a ranch with his wife, Gwen Stefani, in Tishomingo, Oklahoma, his "adopted hometown" about an hour from Ada, where he was born.
He told People, "Gwen and I have done so much traveling and touring and work the first half of our lives that now we're like, 'Hey, I'm good to put my sweatpants on at 6 p.m. and watch Ozark eight times. That's our life now, and we love it."
He also said, "We get away from everything [in LA], and we're just us. It truly does feel different. That's where I feel the most comfortable, happy, and safe."
Who's the most famous person from your hometown? Let us know in the comments!
