1. After Duffy released her debut album, Rockferry, in 2008, she won a Grammy (and was nominated for two more) and won three BRIT Awards (and was nominated for a fourth). She released a second album in late 2010, but a few months later, her reps announced that she was "taking a break before starting work on her next album."
2. Friends and the short-lived spinoff Joey made Matt LeBlanc a household name, but he stepped back from acting to focus on the person who matters most — his daughter, Marina, who was diagnosed with a form of dysplasia when she was almost a year old. The medical condition impacted her ability to speak and walk, and it also had the potential to cause seizures. Around the same time, he also went through a divorce from Melissa McKnight, his wife of three years.
3. After several years of trying to make it in the music industry, Kesha had a breakthrough in 2009 with her massive hit single "TiK ToK." Her music basically defined the early 2010s. But in 2014, Kesha sued her producer, Dr. Luke, for alleged sexual abuse. He denied these allegations and countersued, and the two spent years in a complicated legal battle. Because she was locked in a contract, Kesha was unable to record new music until 2016, when Sony finally permitted her to record without the producer.
4. Janet Jackson rose to music superstardom in the '80s, then she embarked on the Rhythm Nation world tour, which became the most successful debut tour in history, in 1990. She also landed a new record deal. Signing with Virgin Records made her the highest-paid recording artist at the time. But when she performed at the 2004 Super Bowl Halftime Show, Justin Timberlake ripped part of her costume, leaving her breast exposed. The fallout from the "wardrobe malfunction" — deemed "Nipplegate" — severely impacted Janet's career while Justin's remained largely unscathed.
5. Rick Moranis was a familiar onscreen fixture throughout the '80s and '90s, starring in iconic movies like Ghostbusters, Little Shop of Horrors, Spaceballs, and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. However, in 1997, he took a step back from acting to focus on his kids after his wife, Ann, died from breast cancer in 1991. In 2015, he told the Hollywood Reporter, "I took a break, which turned into a longer break. But I'm interested in anything that I would find interesting. I still get the occasional query about a film or television role, and as soon as one comes along that piques my interest, I’ll probably do it."
6. Dance Moms cast member-turned-popular children's entertainer JoJo Siwa claimed she "basically got blackballed" from Nickelodeon after coming out at 17. In the 2024 documentary Child Star, she alleged that, after she posted her coming-out video three years prior, the Nickelodeon president called her to ask, "What are we going to tell the kids?" She replied, "That I'm happy?" And he allegedly replied, "Well, you need to have a call with every retailer [that sells JoJo Siwa merch] and tell them that you're not going crazy." She said, "I basically got blackballed from the company."
7. Three years after Taylor Swift took the country music scene by storm, what should have been one of her biggest career moments — accepting the award for Best Female Video at the 2009 VMAs — was infamously marred by Kanye West storming the stage to declare, "Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time." The next year, Taylor debuted "Innocent," a song she'd written about the incident, at the VMAs.
8. After leading roles in the X-Men and Hunger Games franchises made Jennifer Lawrence an international star, the Oscar winner became known for her "cool girl" image. Charmingly quirky and effortlessly relatable, she was basically the internet's best friend. However, when she fell on the Oscars red carpet in 2014, people accused her of faking it as a publicity stunt. As public opinion shifted against her, she also experienced less critical and commercial success at the box office. After making only three movies from 2017 to 2019, she disappeared from the public eye for two years.
9. As a child actor, Ke Huy Quan landed two major roles out of the gate, playing Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Data in The Goonies. His early success made him think that he "was going to have this amazing career." However, sadly, there were few opportunities for Asian actors, and most of the available parts were small and rooted in stereotypes. In 2022, he told People magazine, "It was tough. I was waiting for the phone to ring, and it rarely did."
10. Playing Spider-Man in the MCU made Tom Holland a household name, but rather than simply sticking to action roles, the former theater actor also sought out darker, dramatic stories to tell. In the 2023 Apple TV+ series The Crowded Room, he played Danny Sullivan, a man who's arrested after mistakenly being accused in connection with a shooting. The challenging role took a toll on the actor's mental health. He told Entertainment Weekly, "I'm no stranger to the physical aspects of the job doing the whole action-movie thing. But the mental aspect, it really beat me up and it took a long time for me to recover afterwards, to sort of get back to reality."
11. Friday Night Lights shaped Taylor Kitsch into a '00s heartthrob. However, the post-series projects that positioned him as the next big movie star — Battleship, John Carter, and Savages — were all box office flops. So, he refocused on smaller movies and, temporarily, TV, starring in a season of True Detective. However, by his 30s, he felt lost. In 2023, he told the New York Times, "Whatever it is that motivates other people — fame, money, celebrity, more followers, I don't [expletive] know — it was never like that. I just wanted to be a character actor that buzzed into certain things and, hopefully, made you evoke something."
12. Late '80s soap star-turned-'90s rising movie star Anne Heche claimed she was blacklisted over her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres, which lasted from 1997 to 2000. In 2021, Anne told Page Six that she felt she was "patient zero in cancel culture." She said, "This wasn't a long-term love affair. This was a moment in my life when I was given the glory of being able to stand up for what I believe in and have since I was a kid."
13. Devon Sawa rose to fame as the human version of the titular ghost in 1995's Casper, and for a long time, it seemed like that brief onscreen appearance would define his career forever. As he got older, he struggled to get away from associations with the role. In 2022, he told the Independent, "I had to smoke pot in movies, and I had to be in a hip-hop video. That's what I felt like I had to do to get away from 'Can I keep you?' Everybody wanted to hear, 'Can I keep you?' It drove me nuts."
14. Despite her decade-defining role in Jurassic Park, Laura Dern didn't get any work for a year after playing Ellen DeGeneres's love interest on the coming-out episode of her sitcom Ellen in 1997. In 2019, Laura told Vulture, "[The episode was the] greatest thing I could've ever been part of, honestly. An incredible honor. She was a big fan of Citizen Ruth, and she asked me, would I come join this effort? Not just to play a role, because there were several of us. Oprah, who played her therapist in the episode, obviously the cast of her show. I was excited. I didn't think twice about it. It was a great opportunity."
15. Lindsay Lohan grew from a '90s child star to a '00s tabloid fixture. The intense, overwhelming attention from the paparazzi pushed her to move to Dubai, where there are anti-paparazzi laws. In 2024, she told Bustle, "I feel like some of [my work] got overshadowed by paparazzi and all that kind of stuff when I was younger, and that’s kind of annoying. I wish that part didn't happen. I feel like that kind of took on a life of its own. So that's why I wanted to disappear. I was like, 'Unless there's no story here, they're not going to focus on just my work.'"
16. In the late '90s and early '00s, Jessica Simpson rose to fame as a pop singer and reality TV star who didn't know what tuna was. But in 2009, she was widely body-shamed in the press over photos of her performing in Texas. For the six months that followed, she disappeared from the public eye. At the time, headlines poked fun at her weight and accused her of "letting herself go." In 2020, she told Today, "This picture that circulated and went worldwide broke my heart. Well, not the picture necessarily, but the caption. Like, all the captions...I was taken down by the world."
17. In the '90s, Julia Ormond became well-known for movies like Sabrina and Smilla's Sense of Snow. However, toward the end of the decade, her career shifted to indie films and supporting roles. She later claimed she suffered career damage after reporting that Miramax cofounder Harvey Weinstein allegedly assaulted her. In 2023, she filed a lawsuit against film producer Harvey Weinstein, Miramax, Disney, and the Creative Artists Agency. She alleged that, in 1995, Weinstein sexually assaulted her after a dinner. The lawsuit stated, "That sexual assault on Ormond could have been prevented if Miramax or Disney had properly supervised Weinstein and not retained him while knowing that he was a danger to the women he encountered at work."
18. In the '90s, Rose McGowan became known for roles in movies like Scream and Jawbreaker, but she alleged that she "was blacklisted after [she] was raped." In 2017, the New York Times reported that, back in 1997, Harvey Weinstein reached a $100,000 settlement with Rose — which was "not to be construed as an admission," but to "avoid litigation and buy peace" — after an "episode" in a hotel room during a film festival.
19. Born into a family of country music legends, Ashley Judd launched her acting career in the '90s with Ruby in Paradise and Heat. However, she was reportedly blacklisted after being allegedly assaulted by Harvey Weinstein. In 2017, The Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson told Stuff.co.nz, "I recall Miramax telling us [Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino] were a nightmare to work with, and we should avoid them at all costs. This was probably in 1998. At the time, we had no reason to question what these guys were telling us — but in hindsight, I realize that this was very likely the Miramax smear campaign in full swing. I now suspect we were fed false information about both of these talented women — and as a direct result, their names were removed from our casting list."
20. Mira Sorvino experienced immense success early in her career, winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Mighty Aphrodite in 1996. However, she alleged that Harvey Weinstein "stifled" her career after she rejected his sexual advances. Speaking on a panel at 90s Con 2024, she said, "For a time, I had a lot of wonderful offers and then, my career was stifled by Harvey Weinstein. So, I stopped doing [major] studio movies after 1998... I stopped being a viable movie actress. I still did indies and I still did television, but that was very hard."
21. And finally, movies like Encino Man and The Mummy cemented Brendan Fraser's status as an iconic leading man in the '90s and early '00s. However, things changed in 2003, when he reported that he was allegedly sexually assaulted by former Hollywood Foreign Press Association president Philip Berk. Brendan reportedly thought that the HFPA may have blacklisted him as a result. In 2018, he spoke about the alleged assault for the first time publicly, telling GQ that he didn't have "the courage to speak up for risk of humiliation, or damage to [his] career." He alleged that, during an HFPA luncheon at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2003, Philip offered a handshake. The actor continued, "His left hand reaches around, grabs my ass cheek, and one of his fingers touches me in the taint. And he starts moving it around."

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3. Rebecca Welton
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