Catherine Zeta-Jones

In February 2026, Catherine Zeta-Jones opened up about her move to New York.

“It’s funny. I’ve lived on the East Coast and for many, many years with Michael [Douglas], and it’s interesting whether it’s been detrimental to my career,” the actress told People. “I never quite know, because I’ve never been in L.A. schmoozing.”

Zeta-Jones added that she spends “more time with New York business people, Wall Street people, art people” than friends from Hollywood. 

“Our friends and our people we bump into are different than I would be if I was in L.A.,” she continued. “And that’s not detrimental to L.A. and people who live there at all; it’s just I swing in a few different roundabouts here in the city.”

Tom Welling

Smallville alum Tom Welling moved to a ranch in North Carolina with wife Jessica Rose and their two kids after the COVID pandemic.

“L.A. was wild at the time,” he told People. “There were no cars on the street, you couldn’t go anywhere. People weren’t leaving their homes. Our first son was starting to crawl and we only had this tiny deck for him to play on. There was this thought of, ‘We don’t know if we can be here anymore.’”

Welling continued, “We have American sport horses, jumpers, and we breed. I’m more than happy to help, but [my wife] is the captain of that ship. It’s peaceful. And it feels real.”

Joe Manganiello and Caitlin O’Connor

In December 2025, Caitlin O’Connor revealed that she and Joe Manganiello recently moved from Los Angeles back to their hometown of Pittsburgh.

“That’s what we really connect on, you know, we share the same upbringing, the same hometown knowledge. And that’s what really connects us as a couple,” she told People. “So it’s beautiful to be back home together.”

Taylor Kitsch

The Friday Night Lights alum moved from Austin, Texas, to Bozeman, Montana, in 2021.

“Being in L.A. was never a great thing for me, and I love being out here — there’s just so much peace to grasp,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2023.

Two years later, he told The Guardian, “I’d rather be in the wild chasing animals with my camera than going to clubs or bars or Hollywood parties.”

Ty Burrell

The Modern Family star opened up about his decision to leave Los Angeles for a quieter life in Utah. 

“It’s just been spectacular,” he told People of his new life in Salt Lake City, Utah, in an interview published on August 3, 2025. “We moved here right after [Modern Family] ended, and I don’t have any regrets. It’s been lovely and a great place to raise the kids.”

Ariel Winter

The Modern Family alum left L.A. after the popular ABC sitcom wrapped in 2020 in favor of a quieter life with her boyfriend, Luke Benward, and their six dogs. Winter explained the decision in a May 2025 story with People.

“I just left the city of L.A. It holds some not-great memories for me, and I’m young and never lived anywhere else, and thought, ‘Why not?’” she said. “If you’re no longer on a network show that shoots there, you don’t really have to be there, and if I get a network show, I can easily go back.”

Katherine Heigl and Josh Kelley

Heigl and husband Josh Kelley traded L.A. for Utah — and never looked back. 

“I have found and carved out this peace for myself and for my family, and it brings me so much joy and contentment and clarity and grounding,” the Grey’s Anatomy alum told E! News in April 2025. “And I just think, ‘Why mess with that?'”

While Heigl admitted that she’s sometimes questioned if she “should be in the game” and “hustling,” at the end of the day, she simple doesn’t “want to.”

“If you don’t want that, then don’t do it, just because you think that’s what you’re supposed to do, or that’s what society expects from you,” she said. 

Heigl added that the move has also deepened her love with Kelley, telling the outlet, “For me, he’s just become, especially in this world we’ve created for ourselves out in Utah, he’s become such my person, and he has always been. Even in the beginning, like a safe harbor, somebody I could just really depend on and count on.”

Josh Duhamel

Duhamel, who hails from North Dakota, built a cabin for his two sons — he shares Axl with ex Fergie and Shepherd with wife Audra Mari — “deep in the woods” in Minnesota.

“It’s removed from everything,” Duhamel told Parade in April 2025. “The closest store is 40 miles away. Once we get there, it’s really about everybody taking care of each other — making memories, spending time with family and friends. You really get a chance to get back to the basics.”

James Van Der Beek

The Dawson’s Creek alum shared in September 2020 that he and his family would be relocating outside of Los Angeles. “Sometimes a fuller life begins with an empty house,” he wrote via Instagram. “Leaving Los Angeles incredibly grateful for all the friends and memories we’ve made here. Onto the next big adventure! ❤️😊.”

His wife, Kimberly Van Der Beek, later revealed that the family settled down in Texas.

Chrissy Metz

After moving from Los Angeles to Nashville, Metz told People in April 2025 that there is “a lot going on” in her new city. “There’s obviously great music, great food. I grew up in the South, so I’m used to sort of that hospitality—it feels more communal here,” she said. “In L.A. it was always like, ‘Oh, you have an audition? What’s it for? Oh, you have an audition? What for?’ It was all very dog eat dog.”

Glen Powell

After more than 15 years in Los Angeles, Powell moved back home to Texas. The Top Gun: Maverick star told The Hollywood Reporter in May 2024 that the real benefit of “getting to this point in Hollywood is that I can now leave Hollywood. It’s like I’ve earned the ability to go back to my family.”

Amanda Seyfried

Seyfried resides on a farm in the Catskills with her husband, Thomas Sadoski. “It’s insane how much I can feel so accomplished and successful here without having to be in a successful movie,” she told The New York Times in November 2020.

Jason Segel

After wrapping How I Met Your Mother, Segel left Los Angeles for Ojai, California. “Being there had the really interesting side-effect of realizing — after six weeks time, mind you — that, ‘Oh, my gosh. I finally feel calm,’” Segel told the Los Angeles Times in June 2023. “And it occurred to me that when you’re doing this job and living in L.A., you’re never leaving campus.” He laughs. “So it was like this whole new experience to realize that when someone outside of Hollywood asks, ‘What are you up to?’ they mean, like, right now. So the answer is: ‘Oh. I’m on my way to the grocery store,’ not ‘I have three projects in development.’”

Eric Stonestreet

The Modern Family star has been living in Kansas City since the sitcom came to an end — which has led him to have a different perspective on Los Angeles life.

“What I realized it does is it highlights everything great about our business, the entertainment business,” he said during a September 2024 appearance on In Depth With Graham Bensinger. “And it highlights all the douchebaggery of our business. It amplifies it. Because I’m here, I’m dealing with people from here, and I’m going into the store and having all these authentic, real moments, and then I go to Hollywood, and you’re reminded of some of the types of people that you deal with.”

He continued, “But then you’re also offered fruit on a big board. ‘Would you like some lychee and kiwi, sir?’ It’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, this is what’s great about Hollywood.’ … It’s really fun. It just amplifies it. It’s like, leaving here and going back and doing something is almost more fun than it was living there, doing it.”

Ali Larter

Larter and her husband, Hayes MacArthur, moved from Los Angeles to a small town in Idaho amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The pair initially took their children on a ski trip in Idaho before deciding to relocate there permanently.

“We fall in love with nature and the mountains and this entire new life,” Larter said during a January 2025 appearance on Live With Kelly and Mark. “We totally pivoted and went for it. We literally had our house [in California] for less than a year. We went back to L.A. and we realized we wanted to put our family first.”

She continued, “Our life is so different there and it’s a small town, and it kind of holds you to a different type of accountability. It’s something that me and Hayes really wanted to do for our children, so we did.”

Jesse Eisenberg

Eisenberg relocated to Indiana with his wife, Anna Strout, who is from the Midwestern state. “I’ve lived in Indiana for a decade on-and-off and that’s where I feel the most comfortable,” Eisenberg said in a February 2025 interview with CBS News. “I’m not somebody who wants to surround myself in an industry that just feels kind of unstable.”

Matthew McConaughey

McConaughey left Hollywood for Texas with his wife, Camila Alves. “When I was rolling in the rom-coms, and I was the rom-com dude … that was my lane and I liked that lane, that lane paid well, and it was working,” he said on a November 2024 episode of the “Good Trouble With Nick Kyrgios” podcast. “I was so strong in that lane that anything outside of that lane, dramas and stuff that I wanted to do, [they] were like, no, no, no, no, no. Hollywood said, ‘No, no, no, no, you should stay there, stay there.’”

He continued, “Since I couldn’t do what I wanted to do, I stopped doing what I was doing and moved down to the ranch in Texas. I made a pact with my wife and said, ‘I’m not going back to work unless I get offered roles I want to do.’”

Lindsay Lohan

Lohan and her husband, Bader Shammas, reside in Dubai — which a source exclusively told Us Weekly in March 2024 has been a “healing place” for her.

Hilarie Burton

The One Tree Hill alum and her husband, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, uprooted their Los Angeles life for a New York working farm. “Living on a farm was always a dream of mine, but I didn’t necessarily know how to make that work with the industry that I am in,” Burton told Good Morning America in June 2021.

Ian Somerhalder

After leaving Los Angeles, the Vampire Diaries alum told E! News in November 2023 that he and Reed are “farm people,” adding, “we produce most of our own food, I live in my cowboy boots.”

Haylie Duff

Duff, Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Becca Tobin opened up to The New York Times in June 2021 about their decision to leave Los Angeles behind for the Lone Star state. “Once you come here, it’s hard to leave,” she said of Texas.

Jamie-Lynn Sigler

Sigler embraced the change of pace after leaving Los Angeles for Texas. “There was a lot of like, ‘Oh my God, look what we can get for this. Look at the life we can give ourselves,’ you know, compared to what we’re able to afford here in L.A.,” she told The New York Times in June 2021. “I just feel like we’re taking a big, deep breath since we got here.”

Becca Tobin

Tobin was surprised by the transition out of Los Angeles to Texas. “You mean I can get in my car, drive five minutes and not fight people when I’m in the grocery store to get in a lot?” she recalled to The New York Times in June 2021. “Oh, and you don’t pay for parking anywhere.”

Christy Carlson Romano

The Kim Possible star and her husband, Brendan Rooney, said goodbye to Hollywood and moved to Austin, Texas. “I love that the girls can kind of be out of the Hollywood area,” she told People in a March 2024 interview. “I love California, we have our PodCo offices there. And I also truly feel at home in Austin. I have a really strong community of friends there, and I’ve really found a way to set down roots.”

Hilary Swank

Swank and Philip Schneider relocated to Colorado. “I have been looking for land since I was in my mid-20s,” she told Architectural Digest in November 2022. “I find nature to be my happiest place, and animals are my other happiest place. And to be with both of them is everything to me.”

Mark Wahlberg

Wahlberg reflected on moving to Las Vegas with his family in an August 2024 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “I mean, I got to tell you that I miss it right now standing here,” he said at the premiere of Netflix’s The Union. “I always miss it. I loved it [here]. But raising teenagers who are growing, I wanted to make sure that they’re put, first and foremost, in a good, safe, healthy environment where they can thrive, pursue their interests and goals and go after what they want to do in life. We could always come back.”

Eva Longoria

Longoria told Marie Claire in November 2024 that she and husband José Bastón had been living in both Spain and Mexico for the past few years. When asked what made her want to leave Los Angeles, Longoria told the outlet, “The vibe was different. And then Covid happened, and it pushed it over the edge. Whether it’s the homelessness or the taxes — not that I want to s*** on California — it just feels like this chapter in my life is done now.”

Amber Heard

Years after Heard’s defamation trial with ex-husband Johnny Depp, a source exclusively told Us in May 2024 that she resides in Spain with her daughter. “Amber doesn’t want to raise a child in Hollywood,” the insider said, adding that Heard “never liked the energy” of Los Angeles. “She [thinks] Madrid is a more welcoming place for her. She feels safe and secure, and she’s surrounded by better people where she is.”

Aaron Paul

While speaking to the Daily Mail on November 21, Paul revealed that he and his wife decided to move themselves and their two children from Los Angeles to Paris following the January 2025 wildfires.

“When the fires happened in L.A., we just knew that we were done with L.A., so we sold our house in L.A. and moved to Paris,” he explained.

“Paris is awesome,” he also said. “We went out there for the kiddos.”