Joan Cusack walked a red carpet for the first time in nearly eleven years last month and found the experience so foreign she didn't know what to do when confetti cannons went off. The 63-year-old actress, born in New York City and raised in the only other place she's ever lived, Chicago, told People magazine she never could stomach Los Angeles long enough to stay.
Her reasons were blunt, and refreshingly free of the usual celebrity diplomacy: the sun, the culture, the relentless self-promotion baked into every coffee-shop conversation. Cusack chose to raise two sons in the Midwest instead, and she's unapologetic about it.
In a Hollywood era where every major talent is expected to plant roots in the hills above Sunset Boulevard, Cusack's decades-long refusal to relocate stands out. It also says something broader about the gap between the entertainment industry's self-image and the values held by millions of Americans who find that image shallow, performative, and disconnected from real life.
Cusack described her attempts to settle in LA with the kind of dry Midwestern honesty that explains why she never fit the town's mold. In her People interview reported by Page Six, she recalled the experience plainly:
"I think a couple times I tried to go out to LA, and I'd be in a coffee shop and the waitress would be like, 'Oh my God, I just got a part doing blah-blah-blah.' Everyone's so beautiful. It's too sunny. I don't even like the sun, so I couldn't do it."
That's not the usual celebrity line about "needing space" or "wanting privacy." It's a direct critique of the LA lifestyle itself, the performative ambition, the obsession with appearance, the culture where everyone is always selling something, including themselves.
Cusack stayed in Chicago. She married attorney Richard Burke. They raised two sons, Dylan, now 29, and Miles, now 26. She took roles that let her work without uprooting her family, including a run on "Shameless" from 2011 to 2015 and voice work in the Toy Story franchise. Her last major film role before the new installment was 2019's *Toy Story 4*.
She isn't the only well-known figure who decided life was better outside California's orbit. Gary Sinise has spoken publicly about why leaving California for Nashville saved his family's future, citing many of the same instincts about priorities and place.
Cusack was candid about the tension between motherhood and a Hollywood career, a tension the industry rarely acknowledges honestly. She described the guilt that came from both directions:
"When [the boys] were younger, there was always that [struggle of]... 'I should be home.' And then I'd be home and I'd be like, 'I should be at work.'"
She resolved that tension by choosing home. Not in the abstract, motivational-poster sense. She literally stayed in Chicago and let the career take a back seat. For years, she was largely absent from red carpets, premieres, and the publicity circuit that keeps Hollywood careers alive.
When she attended the *Toy Story 5* London premiere on May 28, it marked her first red-carpet appearance in roughly eleven years. She brought her husband. She admitted the spectacle caught her off guard.
"I think I turned the corner with my husband and was like, 'Whoa. What's going on here?' And then those guns popped the confetti out and I was like, 'Whoa. What's happening?'"
That's the reaction of someone who genuinely stepped away, not someone who retreated to a Malibu compound and called it "taking a break." She told People she doesn't even dress up much anymore. The red carpet world is foreign to her now.
The entertainment industry has seen its share of personal upheaval in recent years. Melissa Gilbert recently exited New York City under very different and far more troubling circumstances, a reminder that celebrity life decisions don't always stem from the same healthy instincts Cusack describes.
Cusack reprises her role as Jessie in *Toy Story 5*, and on June 9 she attended the film's Los Angeles premiere with Burke, Dylan, and Miles. It was a family affair, fitting for someone who spent years insisting that family came first.
She framed her absence from the spotlight not as a sacrifice but as a choice she's proud of:
"I've been in Chicago raising my kids, which there's nothing more important to me than that."
There's no apology in that sentence. No hedging. No suggestion that she regrets missing out on the Hollywood social circuit. She said of the premiere experience: "It's been kind of crazy to be part of it, a red carpet thing. I don't even dress up that much."
The entertainment world has not been kind to everyone who stayed in its orbit. Veteran actor James Handy was fatally stabbed outside his Los Angeles home earlier this year, a grim reminder that the city Cusack avoided carries real risks alongside its glamour.
Cusack's critique of Los Angeles is mild by most standards. She didn't call the city dangerous or corrupt. She said it was too sunny and too obsessed with itself. But the fact that a two-time Oscar nominee felt she couldn't live there, couldn't tolerate the coffee-shop culture of mutual self-promotion, tells you something about the environment the entertainment industry has built for itself.
It's an industry that talks endlessly about authenticity while rewarding performance in every interaction. Cusack saw through it early and opted out. She chose a city where people don't announce their latest audition to strangers over lattes.
Other long-tenured performers have grappled with Hollywood's culture in their own ways. Ted Danson recently offered a fresh apology for a 1993 incident, illustrating how the industry's social pressures can follow a career for decades.
Cusack, by contrast, simply left. She didn't make a political statement about it. She didn't launch a podcast to explain her journey. She went home to Chicago, married a lawyer, raised her boys, and took work when it made sense.
In an era when celebrity culture demands constant visibility, social media presence, brand partnerships, public positions on every issue, Cusack's path is almost countercultural. She didn't build a lifestyle brand. She didn't monetize her absence. She just lived.
Her sons are now adults. Dylan is 29. Miles is 26. They showed up to the LA premiere with their mother, which suggests the family-first strategy produced the result she wanted.
The physical toll of a long entertainment career is real, as Madonna recently described in detail. Cusack avoided much of that grind by stepping back when her children were young, and she returned to the franchise that still wanted her without having burned herself out.
She told People the London premiere was unlike anything she'd done in years. "In my life, I haven't really done that many of those things," she said. For most Hollywood figures, that would sound like a confession. From Cusack, it sounded like a point of pride.
Joan Cusack's story isn't dramatic. Nobody got arrested. No scandal drove her out. She looked at the Hollywood machine, decided it wasn't for her, and went home. That's the whole thing.
But in a culture that treats Los Angeles as the center of the universe and celebrity as the highest calling, the simple act of choosing somewhere else, choosing family, choosing normalcy, choosing a city where the waitress isn't pitching you her headshot, carries more weight than it should have to.
Sometimes the most radical thing a person in Hollywood can do is leave, stay gone, and come back only when the work is worth it.
