Hollywood has always been a ruthless machine – one where toxic men easily flourish. The cruel industry can wear down even the most confident creative, and these celebrities had to take a step back for their sanity.
1.
Working on the Hit Nickelodeon Series no statement made Left a sour taste in Janet McCurdy’s mouth. While enduring endless abuse from his own mother, the actor also had to deal with despicable behavior from a man he dubbed “The Creator”. As a teenager on the show, McCurdy was sexually abused and drugged. An onslaught of terrifying experiences with her mother and “The Creator” drove her away from acting. He even turned down an offer to join no statement made reboot.
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In 2014, Kesha married music producer, Dr. Luke, claiming he “sexually, physically and verbally abused” her for over a decade. Luke filed a countersuit for breach of contract and defamation. Thus began a very public, very long legal battle that would bring Kesha’s music career to a screeching halt for years.
3.
Brendan Fraser won our hearts with roles in movies in the ’90s Mother And George of the Woods, In a 2018 interview with GQ, Fraser described how Philip Burke (former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association) sexually assaulted her at a 2003 lunch. Burke denied the allegations, but Fraser felt an immediate change in his career. He eventually dropped out of the spotlight, claiming it “toyed with my sense of who I was and what I was doing”.
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Grace Van Dien, who played Chrissy Cunningham stranger thingsAfter some bad experiences on the sets, started rejecting film offers. She claims that a producer “… hired a girl he was sleeping with, and then he asked me to have a threesome with them. So this is my boss. And I didn’t.” [do it]And I cried and I got very upset.” Van Dien now prefers Twitch streaming because it offers more control over his mental health.
5.
Gwyneth Paltrow stepped away from acting for a number of reasons, one of them being Harvey Weinstein. He’s also incredibly busy as the Founder/CEO of his lifestyle brand, Goop. She also considers herself a homebody who is tired of the constant traveling and public scrutiny. However, Paltrow had “a really rough boss for most of my film career at Miramax,” which she counts as one of the reasons she fell out of love with the craft.
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Sandra Bullock told USA Today that she almost quit acting because of the sexism she endured in the industry. She recalled waking up and thinking, “Oh my god, I’m being treated this way because I have a vagina.” While she didn’t drop names or share any details about her experience, she said she felt “less like I was a woman than I was.”
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Britney Spears famously took a hiatus from music to get back at her father, Jamie, who controlled every aspect of her life as her mentor. Her mother and sister did nothing to get the pop star out of her father’s grasp.
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As a teenager, JoJo worked with Blackground Records in an effort to release her music with a toxic environment. She claims that when she was 18, the president of the label insisted that JoJo was not thin enough, saying “we want you to look as healthy as possible.” She challenged his comment, but was eventually put on a 500-calorie-a-day diet. This resulted in extreme insecurity which led him down a dark, reckless path. After a hiatus of several years, JoJo was able to return with new music under a different label.
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In 2017, Jane Seymour revealed that she was sexually assaulted early in her career by “the most powerful man in Hollywood at the time”. While discussing a possible job opportunity with a producer, she soon learns that he expects sexual favors in return. He reportedly told her, “…I’ve done my job. Now it’s your turn to do yours.” This caused Seymour to give up acting for a year, and she almost completely left the industry.
10.
Despite being a wildly successful musician in the early 2000s, Ashanti was forced to take a break from the music industry when the people in charge of her record label were accused of drug money laundering. “It was not an option,” she says. “It was something that needed to happen because of everything that was happening.”
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Rose McGowan spent years speaking out against Harvey Weinstein and other Hollywood abusers. planet Terror The star claimed that the disgraced filmmaker raped her in 1997. “I might have had a better career if I hadn’t been blacklisted by Weinstein,” she told The Guardian in 2021. McGowan moved to Mexico to escape the industry’s toxicity, among other things, and vowed never to live in the United States again.
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Tara Sabkoff claims she was robbed of her desired acting career by rejecting Harvey Weinstein’s advances. “My reputation was ruined by false gossip, and I was called ‘too difficult to work with,'” she told Variety. “After that it became impossible for me to find work as an actress, so I had to start a new career path again…”
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Freddie Prinze Jr. “hated every moment” of working with Kiefer Sutherland 24 So much so, that it prompted him to quit acting. Prinze said, “Kiefer was the most unprofessional dude in the world.” “I’m not talking trash, I’ll say it to his face, I think everybody who’s worked with him has said that.” He said the experience made him “want to quit the business… So, I just stayed.”
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NCIS The star, Lauren Hawley, shared her Harvey Weinstein horror story in 2017. after working with beautiful girls, the producer subjected Holly to a harrowing situation in a hotel room while she was naked after a shower. Though the encounter didn’t destroy his career, it demoralized him enough that he decided to walk away from the film altogether.
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As an ’80s movie icon, Sean Young had to endure many toxic, entitled men. In an interview with The Daily Beast, she detailed negative experiences with people like James Woods, Ridley Scott, Charlie Sheen, Oliver Stone, and (of course) Harvey Weinstein, among others. Young eventually stepped away from the Hollywood scene after being blacklisted, happily participating in smaller projects.
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Romola Garai talks about her experience Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights “A Well of Horrible Misogyny” is so scary it left Hollywood outright. After a stint at university, Garai decided to give acting another shot, this time with feminism at the forefront.
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If you needed proof that Hollywood has always been cruel, look no further than Cora Sue Collins. The child actor of the 30s appeared in several films during the Golden Age of Tinseltown. At age 15, she was offered a role with the stipulation that she would sleep with 50-year-old screenwriter Harry Ruskin. “It’s a rotten business,” Collins said. “It was then, it is now. And it’s not going to change.” Naturally, she has no regrets about leaving the industry.