Even among us common folk, it can be hard to find that balance between family and work obligations.
For some, celebrity just isn’t as important as providing a stable, nurturing home life.
Here are some stars who chose family over fame.
“People said, ‘How could you walk away from music?'”
“But being a dad there’s nothing that can touch that.
I’d just stare at them.
I knew their sweet faces and their dispositions.
But I didn’t know who they were.”
He took the opportunity to be a hands-on father, even leaving handwritten notes in lunches he packed himself.
“You start being a part of the community,” he explained.
“The dads across the soccer field looked at me as a dad just like them.
And I was very grateful.”
“You don’t have a choice.
“My work, I leave it at work.
I don’t bring it home.
But you got to let it go.
You have a 2-year-old who just wants to play with you and that’s what’s most important.”
Look at what Brad and Angelina go through.”
It makes no sense at all.
There’s nothing anyone can say.
It’s just you do what you feel like you better do.
It’s a very complicated answer, because I felt a variety of ways over the last years."
“I put myself in an adult situation, so I needed to handle it like an adult.
I think that’s how it registers it to her.”
It turns out, there was a pretty good reason why she left Hollywood.
During an audition forThe Big Chill, she met Kevin Kline.
She was devastated."
I knew if I continued on that track, I probably wouldn’t have gotten married."
Once his children were a bit older, O’Donnellaccepted his current roleonNCIS: Los Angeles.
“You’d be amazed how we figure it out,“she once dished.
“I’ve never been away for more than, I think, four days.
Maybe once I was gone for my kids for five days… Then I figure out where I’m going to take the kid and when I can get home.”
“We are definitely a modern family,“Garner explainedon theTodayshow.
“You don’t have a choice.”
Her exbacked this upin statements toE!
Newssaying, “Jen is a superhero mom.
We try our best, we put them first and that’s what we do.”
But it was important to me.
I have absolutely no regrets whatsoever.
My life is wonderful.”
“I took a break, which turned into a longer break,” he said.
“But I’m interested in anything that I would find interesting.
“I had just had my son.
I had been away so much for the first year of his life,” Montgomery toldUSA Today.
“I needed to take the time and actually be like mommy for a minute…
I worried about every little thing being perfect with Jackson,” she says about when he was born.
“I tried to verify everything was just right.
I read all the books.”
One thing she learned during her time as a stay-at-home mother is that it’s definitely not easy.
The star said that those two years were “more challenging than anything I’ve ever done at work.
But I loved it.”
Candace Cameron Bure
If you watchedFull Housein the ’80s and ’90s, you know Candace Cameron Bure.
Together the pair share three children, Natasha, Lev, and Maksim.
Fans of the original sitcom went crazy and, before long, Bure joinedThe Viewas a co-host.
Opting for a quieter existence, the family relocated to Hailey, Idaho.
The foundation I lay if it’s not there now, it won’t be later.”
Moore’s investment in her family paid off.
Rumerwon the Mirror Ball trophyonDancing with the Starsand couldn’t help but reflect on her upbringing.
Somebody said as we were walking past, ‘Oh, that’s Julia Roberts.’
That’s what gives you perspective.
I’m glad about that.
It’s helped that I’m definitely of a particular age.”
