Timing is everything: Different actors make different choices on when to retire

The late Gene Hackman’s last feature film was 2004’s “Welcome to Mooseport,” which co-starred Maura Tierney and Ray Romano.

Exit, stage left.

Making an entrance is an important bit of stagecraft, and an essential skill in becoming a star. A performer appears and — even if he has no thunderous line to deliver, no dramatic bit of business to display — the charisma is evident. The audience is riveted. Suddenly, a great career is launched.

But how one finally leaves the stage is just as important.

I was thinking of that recently as I noted a couple of celebrity milestones. Some were happy, like Jack Nicholson marking his 88th birthday. Some were tragic, like the passing of Gene Hackman, frail and alone, at 95.

The two stars never shared a screen, but they had a few things in common. Both had begun acting in the 1950s. Both found stardom relatively late — Hackman at 36 in “Bonnie and Clyde,” Nicholson at 32 in “Easy Rider.” Both dominated ’70s cinema. Both were as adept in comedy as in drama, and both won multiple Academy Awards.

And both also knew when to walk away.

Jack Nicholson in “How Do You Know.”

To be fair, Nicholson hasn’t “officially” retired. He even showed up recently to celebrate the 50th anniversary of “Saturday Night Live” (and, really, to give a nod to his “Anger Management” co-star Adam Sandler). But that was a one-off. Nicholson’s last feature was “How Do You Know” in 2010; a few proposed projects, like an American remake of the 2016 German film “Toni Erdmann,” never launched.

That gave rise to rumors that the Neptune native wasn’t able to remember his lines anymore. The reason, however, may be a lot simpler: To the perpetually laid-back Jack, the acting thing was just beginning to feel like too much work. “He wants to be quiet,” his friend, the record producer Lou Adler, revealed recently. “He wants to eat what he wants. He wants to live the life he wants.”

Who doesn’t?

Twenty years ago, long before Alzheimer’s set in, Hackman decided on a similarly subdued exit from the profession. He had been battling serious health problems for a while, even going through an angioplasty in 1990; a decade later, he said, his doctor warned him that his heart “wasn’t in the kind of shape that I should be putting it under any stress.” After 2004’s “Welcome to Mooseport,” he stopped accepting movie roles.

Like Nicholson, he decided that he, too, would live the life he wanted — and, until the sad and unexpected death of his wife and caregiver, that’s what he did. He moved to New Mexico. He restored homes. He painted. He wrote or co-wrote five novels. He invested in a restaurant, bicycled around Santa Fe, played with his dogs.

Occasionally the paparazzi would go into stakeout mode, hoping to catch a shot of him looking decrepit. Sometimes fans would fulminate on social media; how could such a wonderful actor deprive them of more films? They didn’t realize that Hackman didn’t owe them anything. Acting had been a huge part of his life, yes. But as he proved daily, it wasn’t the whole of his life.

“Always leave them wanting more,” Al Jolson used to say, about performing. Stars like Nicholson and Hackman have suggested an additional, even more important rule: Always leave something for yourself.

Luise Rainer with William Powell in “The Great Ziegfeld.”

For other stars, the decision to retire was driven by wanting to leave on top, and on their own terms. Luise Rainer won her first Oscar in 1936 for “The Great Ziegfeld,” then, amazingly, won again the next year for “The Good Earth.” She was only 27. She soon realized that, having so quickly reached that pinnacle, there was no place to go but down; after a few disappointing follow-up projects, she quit the film industry completely in 1938.

A few years later, Greta Garbo walked away from Hollywood, too. She had never much liked the place anyway, and although “Ninotchka” had been a huge hit in 1939, critics were less impressed by 1941’s “Two-Faced Woman.” So, Garbo quietly withdrew. Although there were occasional, intriguing offers, such as playing Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard,” she settled into a carefully curated, private life in Manhattan.

For other stars, retiring was less a way to avoid failure than to freeze time, preserving a perpetually youthful image for themselves, and their fans.

Cary Grant was not only an icon of male beauty for more than 30 years, but a coolly self-aware one; preparing to play in “Charade” with a 25-years-younger Audrey Hepburn, he made sure the script made her the pursuer, so he wouldn’t come off as a dirty old man. But then, three years later, he found himself cast in “Walk, Don’t Run” not as the romantic lead, but in a supporting role; he took that as a sign and left acting altogether, preferring to devote his energies to his new baby daughter.

Jump before you’re pushed; it was a strategy that Sean Connery would later adopt. Rugged virility had always been his stock in trade; even with his toupée (and especially without), he remained a plausible leading man well into his 60s. Later, he segued into supporting roles, winning an Oscar for 1987’s “The Untouchables.” But after the chaotic shoot of 2003’s CGI-heavy “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” the actor abruptly quit the business, even turning down chances to play Gandalf in “The Lord of the Rings” and Dumbledore in the Harry Potter franchise.

Michael Caine with Christian Bale in 2012’s “The Dark Knight Rises.”

Publicly, Connery grumbled that this new age of epic fantasy and elaborate special effects left him cold; his longtime friend Michael Caine told me the real reason was that his mate could no longer stand being shut out of romantic leads, something he himself had long ago made peace with. “I used to get the girl,” the still-busy Caine added with a twinkle. “Now I get the part.” (And continued getting them until he finally retired two years ago, at 90.)

Other stars refuse to retire, despite a slip in status. Perhaps because actresses are used to being pushed into the background once they pass 40, they’re less vain, more adaptable than their male co-stars. Shirley MacLaine, Rita Moreno, Ellen Burstyn — Oscar-winners all — continue to take on supporting roles even in their 90s. The art is what is most important to them, not their image; right up until the end, another award-winner, Cloris Leachman, happily played doddering grandmas in slapstick comedies. They were jobs, weren’t they?

Of course, a few performers — Michael J. Fox, Bruce Willis — are forced to retire due to worsening medical conditions. Still, others persist even after a pessimistic diagnosis, making their own final appearances a kind of self-chiseled memorial. How much more affecting are “The Deer Hunter” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” knowing that John Cazale and Chadwick Boseman were already dying from cancer when they shot them? How much more elegiac is “The Shootist,” that goodbye to a terminally ill gunfighter, knowing that it would be star John Wayne’s own farewell?

Yes, in the end, you can’t cheat death. But sometimes — as Nicholson and Hackman, Garbo and Grant proved — if you play things right, you can achieve a kind of eternal youth.

At least on film.
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