Joan Cusack walked a red carpet this month for the first time in more than a decade. The occasion was the premiere of Toy Story 5, where the 63-year-old reprises her voice role as cowgirl Jessie. For anyone who grew up watching the Cusack siblings dominate the screen through the 1980s and 1990s, her reappearance raised an obvious question: what happened to the rest of them?
The answer, as the Daily Mail detailed in a recent profile, is a story of five siblings who once shared marquees with Nicolas Cage, Dustin Hoffman, and Jackie Chan, and who, one by one, stepped away from or were pushed out of the industry their father built them for.
It is also, for those paying attention, a quiet case study in what happens when talent collides with Hollywood's political monoculture and its ruthless economics of relevance.
All five Cusack children, Ann, Joan, John, Bill, and Susie, grew up in Chicago, the children of actor and filmmaker Dick Cusack. They cut their teeth in local theatre. Joan once told The Guardian that she was drawn to performing only because her older sister Ann was already involved.
"I was very shy, but my sister Ann was involved in the theatre and I tagged along, that's how I got interested in drama."
Director John Hughes discovered Joan and John through that same Chicago theatre scene and cast them in Sixteen Candles, Joan at 21, John at 18. Joan's film debut had actually come earlier, in 1980's My Bodyguard, where her father Dick appeared alongside her.
By the late 1990s, the family's footprint was remarkable. Joan had earned two Oscar nominations, for Working Girl in 1988 and In & Out in 1997. John was one of the most sought-after leading men in Hollywood. Ann had broken through in A League of Their Own in 1992 at age 31. Susie debuted the same year in Hero, alongside Joan and Dustin Hoffman. And Bill joined Joan, John, and Ann in Grosse Pointe Blank in 1997, the same year he appeared in Con Air.
In 2000, the Chicago Film Critics Association honored the entire family with its Commitment to Chicago Award. Joan and John alone had co-starred in ten movies together.
John Cusack once remarked of the family collaborations: "I can't believe they still let us to do it."
Joan Cusack's departure from the spotlight was deliberate. She married Richard Burke in 1996 and, during the 2010s, relocated from Los Angeles back to Chicago, where she raised sons Dylan, now 28, and Miles, 25. She opened a gift shop called Judy Maxwell Home, named after Barbra Streisand's character in What's Up Doc?
Her résumé by that point needed no padding. She had played the villain in Addams Family Values, the uptight principal in School of Rock, and a Chicago housewife in Shameless, a role that won her a Primetime Emmy. Joan Cusack chose Chicago over Hollywood and, by all available evidence, has never looked back.
At the Toy Story 5 premiere, she put it plainly:
"I feel so honored to have worked in this industry for a long time. But it's also great to live your life and raise your kids and be in Chicago and be a normal person. It's kind of priceless, so there's that."
There is something refreshing about that, a two-time Oscar nominee who decided that being a normal person in a real American city mattered more than chasing the next role. In an industry that treats relevance like oxygen, Joan Cusack simply stopped breathing the Hollywood air and found she could live just fine without it.
Her brother John's trajectory looks less like a choice and more like an exile.
John Cusack was once the kind of actor studios built movies around. Say Anything. High Fidelity. Grosse Pointe Blank. Con Air. He had range, box-office pull, and critical respect. By 2020, he was telling The Guardian a different story entirely:
"In the last few years, I haven't been able to get projects financed. That could be a function of getting older. Or it could be a function of being cold... I haven't really been hot for a long time."
His last American film role was in Pursuit, a 2022 action thriller in which he played a crime boss. Before that, he had turned to the Chinese film market, starring alongside Jackie Chan in Dragon Blade in 2010 and appearing in Decoded in 2024, described as a box-office hit in China.
He is now listed on Cameo, the platform where fans pay celebrities for personalized video messages. His rate: $150 per recording.
The profile also noted that John Cusack has been outspoken in his political views, including criticism of President Trump and vocal support for Palestine. Whether those positions contributed to Hollywood's cold shoulder is a question the industry will never answer honestly. But the timeline is hard to ignore: a leading man with a strong body of work finds himself unable to get financing, turns to foreign markets and a fan-video app, and simultaneously holds views that place him well outside the mainstream of even Hollywood's own left-leaning consensus on certain issues. The industry rewards conformity in strange and selective ways.
In a town where red carpet appearances can define a career's momentum, John Cusack's absence from American premieres speaks volumes.
If John's fade was gradual, the other Cusack siblings vanished almost without a trace.
Bill Cusack, who was 33 when he appeared in Grosse Pointe Blank, stopped acting altogether. He now writes promotions for a cable network, the network's name was not reported. His screen career, such as it was, amounted to a handful of roles in the late 1990s and then silence.
Susie Cusack's story is even more spare. She debuted in Hero in 1992 at age 21, appearing alongside Joan and Dustin Hoffman. Then she withdrew entirely from the public eye. No interviews. No explanations. No comeback trail.
Ann Cusack has fared somewhat better. After her breakthrough in A League of Their Own, she continued working steadily if not spectacularly. She recently landed parts in Better Call Saul on Netflix and The Boys on Prime Video. But she spends most of her time now as a singer, performing R&B and classic blues with Ann Cusack & The Generation Jones Band.
The contrast with other celebrity families, where every sibling and cousin clings to the industry with both hands, is striking. The Cusacks, for the most part, simply walked away. Or were shown the door. Hollywood has never been kind to those who fall out of its favor, whether by choice or circumstance.
Joan Cusack's reappearance at the Toy Story 5 premiere is not a comeback in the traditional sense. She never declared war on the industry or burned bridges. She simply left, raised her family, ran a gift shop, and lived in the city where she grew up. The fact that her return to a single red carpet qualifies as news tells you how thoroughly she had removed herself from the machine.
It also tells you something about the machine itself. Hollywood is a town that chews through families. The Cusacks arrived with five siblings, a filmmaker father, and enough collective talent to earn Oscars, Emmys, and a citywide award. Within two decades, one had retreated to Chicago, one was selling video greetings online, one was writing cable promos, one was singing blues in small venues, and one had disappeared altogether.
Dick Cusack built a family of performers. The industry used them, sorted them, and moved on.
Joan Cusack, at least, had the good sense to leave on her own terms. In a business that rarely lets anyone do that, choosing Chicago over Los Angeles, choosing normal life over the next audition, may be the most impressive role she ever played.
