Quitting Time

We’d all like to quit while we’re ahead. In television history, the beloved sitcoms "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "The Bob Newhart Show" earned fans’ enduring respect for exiting at the peak of their popularity in the 1970s. When it comes to actors, if you hang around too long, you risk becoming a self-parody (think Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro). In entertainment and sports, there have been notable, if not notorious, questionable "retirements," such as Frank Sinatra’s announced retirement at the age of 55 in 1971, only to lead to his successful "Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back" comeback less than two years later, or basketball great Michael Jordan’s retirements, in 1993 and in 1999. In the moviehouse, the true stories of actresses and actors who decided to bow out at the height of their popularity could often provide the scripts for box-office melodramas.

Decades before Meryl Streep’s third Oscar win, out of a record 17 nominations (not to mention eight Golden Globe Awards and two Emmy Awards), cemented her revered status as the actress’ actress, against whom all other performances are compared, there was, and remains, Greta Garbo (above). To a generation of filmgoers familiar with Natalie Portman, Hilary Swank, Sandra Bullock and Kate Winslet (names that will undoubtedly be supplanted in a couple of years by a fresh crop of fleeting names), the name Greta Garbo is probably as alien as the concept of a time when motion pictures lacked the technology for sound, but even a half-century after Garbo willingly departed Hollywood, David Shipman, author of The Great Movie Stars: The Golden Years, noted, "She is, ultimately, the standard against which all other screen actresses are measured."

Greta Garbo in the 1924 Swedish film "The Saga of Gosta Berling"

Born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson in 1905 in Stockholm, she had starred in her first lead role in a silent Swedish film in 1924 when the vice president and general manager of MGM, Louis B. Mayer, who purportedly said, "It was her eyes, I can make a star out of her," brought her to Hollywood in 1925.

She was featured in ten silent motion pictures in Hollywood, the third of which, "Flesh and the Devil" (above), established her international stardom, before she made the successful transition to sound films with an Academy Award-nominated role in "Anna Christie" (1930). While the advent of sound capsized the careers of several silent era stars, it proved to be nothing short of a boon for the exotic Swedish emigrant, as MGM proudly proclaimed, "Garbo Talks!"

Throughout her career, Greta Garbo was the highest paid actor at MGM. According to film historian Jeffrey Vance, she could convey her characters’ deepest feelings with a subtle movement or gesture but especially with her eyes. Clarence Brown, who directed her in seven films, noted, "You could see thought. If she had to look at one person with jealousy and another with love, she didn’t have to change her expression. You could see it in her eyes as she looked from one to another."

Legendary director George Cukor, who worked with Garbo on "Camille" (1936) and her final film, "Two-Faced Woman" (1941), said, "She had a talent that few actresses…possess. In close-ups, she gave the illusion of great movement. She would move her head, just a little bit, and the whole screen would come alive, like a strong breeze that made itself felt."

In 1941, the four-time Oscar-nominated superstar, four years shy of her fortieth birthday, retired to a private life, shunning publicity up to her passing, age 84, in 1990. During her career, Garbo had ignored Hollywood society, snubbing fan mail and refusing to sign autographs, preferring instead time spent alone or with close friends. Four years before her death, she told a biographer, "I was tired of Hollywood. I did not like my work. There were many days when I had to force myself to go to the studio…I really wanted to live another life."

By the early 1930s, the phrase, "I want to be alone!" (from her role in 1932’s "Grand Hotel") had become a permanent fixture in her legacy, coincidentally echoing dialogue from her earlier films. In "Love" (1927), she says, "I like to be alone," followed two years later by her line in "The Single Standard," "I am walking alone because I want to be alone." She tells one lover in 1931’s "Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise)." "I want to be alone for a little while," and she tells another lover in  that same year’s "Mata Hari," "I never look ahead. By next spring I shall probably be…alone." Garbo would later, erroneously, maintain, "I never said, ‘I want to be alone.’ I only said, ‘I want to be let alone.’ There is a world of difference."

In 1948, Garbo was set to star in a film based on a novel by Honoré de Balzac before a financial shortage forced the production to be abandoned. (Lost for 40 years, her screen tests, marking her final performance for a camera, were rediscovered and featured in a 2005 documentary). A similar budget dilemma doomed a screen biography of the famous stage actress Sarah Bernhardt, to be produced by David O. Selznick, directed by George Cukor and costarring Laurence Olivier. In 1969, Italain filmmaker Luchino Visconti tried to lure her out of retirement for an international version of Marcel Proust’s monumental novel Remembrance of Things Past.

Well-known for her daily walks in New York City, dressed down in wide-brimmed hats with oversized sunglasses, Garbo became the prey of paparazzi and curious fans. The press called her the "Swedish Sphinx."

Bette Davis once commented, "Her instinct, her mastery over the machine, was pure witchcraft. I cannot analyze this woman’s acting. I only know that no one else so effectively worked in front of the camera." Writer David Shipman pointed out, "Since the time of her second, if not her first, Hollywood film she has not been surpassed. For over 50 years the mystery, the enigma of Garbo has been a statutory feature of magazine journalism, her ability a source of wonder to critics."

Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in "Charade"

Cary Grant, whose flawless film career spanned 34 years and over 70 films, was once told by an interviewer, "Everybody would like to be Cary Grant," in response to which he said, "So would I." When he made 1963’s "Charade," a lighthearted crime thriller directed by Stanley Donen, channeling the mischievous spirit of Alfred Hitchcock, the debonair actor, then 59, was having doubts about his tenure as a romantic lead. He was particularly sensitive about the age difference separating him from his 34-year-old costar, Audrey Hepburn. To ease his discomfort over their intimate interplay, the filmmakers gave him dialogue wryly relating to his age and emphasized Hepburn as the pursuer.

By the time he appeared in his last film, "Walk, Don’t Run," a 1966 romantic comedy set in Tokyo during the 1964 Summer Olympics, 62-year-old Grant was reduced to playing the senior matchmaker for young couple Jim Hutton and Samantha Eggar. That same year, 1966, Grant’s daughter, Jennifer (below), was born to wife actress Dyan Cannon, and he retired, hoping to establish a stable permanence in her life.

In the late 1960s, he accepted an active position on the board of directors at Fabergé, the cosmetics and toiletries manufacturer. During his final years, Grant toured the U.S. in a one-man show, "A Conversation with Cary Grant," presenting film clips and answering questions from the audience. He had suffered a stroke in 1984, and while preparing for his show in Davenport, Iowa, he had a cerebral hemorrhage. He died, age 82.

"I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be," Cary Grant once remarked, "and I finally became that person. Or he became me. Or we met at some point."

Jean Arthur, born Gladys Greene, a high school dropout who began her career as a model before turning to acting while still a teenager (reportedly adopting her stage name from two of her childhood heroes, Jeanne d’Arc - Joan of Arc - and King Arthur), became the quintessential screwball comedy actress in the 1930s. "Above all," author David Shipman acknowledged Arthur’s "fetching husky voice, childishly querulous at one moment, deeply reassuring the next. It never left you in doubt and was curiously touching when she was sentimental or wistful; and very charming when she was in high spirits."

Jean Arthur and Gary Cooper in "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town"

 "No one was more closely identified with the screwball comedy than Jean Arthur," James Harvey, a playwright, critic and author of The Golden Era of Comedy: Romantic Comedy, observed, "The screwball style itself seems almost unimaginable without her." Best known for three films of the 1930s directed by Frank Capra - "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" (with Gary Cooper), "You Can’t Take It With You" (costarring James Stewart), "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (again with James Stewart) - roles, according to critic Leonard Maltin, "that combined no-nonsense pragmatism with romantic vulnerability," she garnered her sole Oscar nomination for her performance in "The More the Merrier," costarring Joel McCrea. ("The More the Merrier" was remade in 1966 as the aforementioned "Walk, Don’t Run," starring Cary Grant.)

By the late 1930s, Jean Arthur was telling reporters that she loved acting but hated being a star. She felt stars owed a duty to the public. "It’s a strenuous job to have to live up to the way you look on the screen every day of your life." Comparing cinema to theater, she noted, "I don’t think Hollywood is the place to be yourself. The individual ought to find herself before coming to Hollywood."

Frank Capra recalled that she vomited in her dressing room between camera setups only to re-emerge and perform a flawless take every time. "Never have I seen a performer plagued with such a chronic case of stage jitters," he said. "Jean Arthur is an enigmatic figure because she doesn’t do very well in crowds, she doesn’t do very well with people, and she doesn’t do very well with life, but she does very well as an actress."

Much like Greta Garbo, Arthur avoided interviews, ducked photographers and sidestepped publicity. In fact, a 1940 Life magazine writer claimed, "Next to Garbo, Jean Arthur is Hollywood’s reigning mystery woman." She first "retired" when her contract with Columbia Pictures expired in 1944, a landmark she allegedly celebrated by joyously running through the studio lot, shouting, "I’m free! I’m free!" She turned down several film offers, except for a role alongside Marlene Dietrich in director Billy Wilder’s romantic comedy "A Foreign Affair" in 1948.

Her post-Hollywood work in theater was sporadic, often stymied by her shyness and doubts about her profession. She would succumb to stage fright and bouts with psychosomatic ails. She made a splash on Broadway in a 1950 production of "Peter Pan" (above) before being coaxed back to films one last time by director George Stevens for "Shane" (1953), a cattle baron vs. sodbusters western casting Arthur in a memorably unglamorous, non-comedic role as a frontier housewife whose love for husband Van Heflin is uncomfortably challenged by the presence of itinerant gunfighter Alan Ladd. Although the comeback role turned out to be the biggest box-office hit of her career, she needed constant reassurance during production and was prone to repeated marathon crying jags.

Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur and Van Heflin in a publicity shot for "Shane"

Arthur starred in a 1954 stage production about Joan of Arc, only to leave the play when she had a nervous breakdown. After she enjoyed a guest appearance on TV’s "Gunsmoke," starring James Arness, she opted to star in a series of her own, portraying an attorney in the sitcom "The Jean Arthur Show" (below), which was canceled after a dozen episodes.

She taught drama at a couple of colleges, firstly at Vassar, where her students included a young Meryl Streep, whose performance in a play Arthur compared to "watching a movie star." In 1975, the Broadway play "First Monday in October," about the Supreme Court’s first female justice, was written especially for Arthur, but shortly after opening opposite Melvyn Douglas, she succumbed to stage fright and was replaced by Jane Alexander.

Retiring for good, Jean Arthur retreated to a seaside home in Carmel, California, steadfastly refusing interviews, except for the author of a book about her onetime mentor, Frank Capra. She once said that she would rather have her throat cut than be interviewed.

She died from heart failure, age 90, in 1991. In retrospect, critic Charles Champlin wrote, "To at least one teenager in a small town…Jean Arthur suggested strongly that the ideal woman could be - ought to be - judged by her spirit as well as her beauty…The notion of the woman as a friend and confidante, as well as someone you courted and were nuts about, someone whose true beauty was internal rather than external, became a full-blown possibility as we watched Jean Arthur."

In 1950, 20-year-old Grace Kelly embarked on an acting career that included several stage roles in New York City and at least 40 live TV dramas. She made her film debut with a small part in "Fourteen Hours" (1951), had her first leading role, opposite Gary Cooper, in "High Noon" (1952) and became a bona fide movie star, alongside Clark Gable and Ava Gardner, in "Mogambo" (1953), directed by John Ford.  Then Alfred Hitchcock molded her into his ideal blonde ice-goddess in "Dial M for Murder" (1954), "Rear Window" (1954) and "To Catch a Thief" (1955).

Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in "To Catch a Thief"

Hitchcock once explained his preference for chilly blonde women, a motif in his films as familiar as his cameo appearances, in an interview with Francois Truffaut, saying, "You know why I favor sophisticated blondes in my films? We’re after the drawing-room type, the real ladies who become whores once they’re in the bedroom." Truffaut responded, "What intrigues you is the paradox between the inner fire and the cool surface."

Gene Kelly’s performance in "The Country Girl" (1954), with Bing Crosby and William Holden, won her the Best Actress Oscar, beating out odds-on favorite (and a subsequently disgruntled) Judy Garland for "A Star Is Born." Kelly’s last screen role, her eleventh film in six years, was in "High Society" (1956), with Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. It was while attending the Cannes Film Festival in April the previous year that she was asked to be part of a photo shoot at the Palace of Monaco, the residence of Prince Rainier III. Upon her return to the U.S., she started a private correspondence with Rainier. In December of 1955, the prince coincidentally toured America, eventually meeting Kelly’s family and proposing to her three days later.

The "Wedding of the Century" was set for April 19, 1956. More than 200,000 people lined the streets in Monaco to greet the 26-year-old princess consort-to-be, while 600 guests, among them David Niven, Ava Gardner and Gloria Swanson, attended the church ceremony.

At the time, Alfred Hitchcock quipped that he was "very happy that Grace has found herself such a good part." Six years later, Hitchcock offered Kelly the lead role in "Marnie" (based on a novel the rights to which the filmmaker had purchased specifically with Kelly in mind). She was tempted, and Prince Rainier, himself very fond of Hitchcock, was seemingly in favor the idea, until French President Charles de Gaulle, mindful of Monaco’s fiscal links with France, forced the prince to reconsider compromising the principality with a frivolous image, and Kelly definitively abandoned the project.

Thus it was blonde starlet Tippi Hedren (mother of actress Melanie Griffith) whom Hitchcock attempted to transform into another Grace Kelly, first in "The Birds" and then in "Marnie." Francois Truffaut, whose extensive interviews with the director resulted in the book Hitchcock by Truffaut, noted that the earlier film, "Vertigo" (1958) was "undoubtedly a film in which the leading lady (Kim Novak) was cast as a substitute" to imitate Grace Kelly.

Grace Kelly did return to the performing arts in a way with a series of poetry readings on the stage and by narrating the 1977 documentary "The Children of  Theatre Street." She also narrated "The Poppy Is Also a Flower" (aka "The Opium Connection"), a 1966 all-star made-for-television movie financed by the United Nations and based on a story by James Bond creator Ian Fleming. Director Herbert Ross attempted unsuccessfully to lure her out of retirement for 1977’s "The Turning Point," a drama about the reunion between two former ballet stars.

Her Serene Highness, Princess of Monaco, Princess Grace and Prince Rainier had three children. On September 13, 1982, while driving with her daughter, Stephanie, to Monaco from their country estate, the princess had a stroke and drove off the road down a mountainside. Stephanie suffered a cervical fracture and bruises, but Princess Grace, who never regained consciousness, died at the hospital the next day. She was 52.

Diana and Grace, two princesses who met untimely ends in auto accidents

Four hundred people attended the funeral service. The British royal family was represented by Diana, Princess of Wales. Also present was Kelly’s "To Catch a Thief" costar Cary Grant, with whom she developed a mutual admiration which they cherished for the rest of their lives. Once asked to name his favorite actress, Grant said, "With all due respect to dear Ingrid Bergman, I much preferred Grace. She had serenity."

In his eulogy at her funeral, James Stewart said, "You know, I just love Grace Kelly. Not because she was a princess, not because she was an actress, not because she was my friend, but because she was just about the nicest lady I ever met. Grace brought into my life, as she brought into yours, a soft, warm light every time I saw her, and every time I saw her was a holiday of its own. No question, I’ll miss her, we’ll all miss her. God bless you, Princess Grace."

At the age of 20, Dolores Hart garnered a Tony Award nomination for her Broadway debut in "The Pleasure of His Company." She starred in ten movies over a five-year period in the late 1950s and early 1960s, making her film debut in "Loving You" (1957), in which she gave Elvis Presley (whom she had never heard prior to her screen test) his first onscreen kiss. Often asked afterward what kissing Elvis was like, she would say with a chuckle, "I think the limit for a screen kiss back then was something like fifteen seconds. That one has lasted forty years." A year later, she costarred with Elvis again in "King Creole." Off-camera, Hart later recalled, she and Elvis would discuss Bible passages.

It was during the 1959 Broadway run of the abovementioned "The Pleasure of His Company" that the 20-year-old actress first visited the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut, where she surprisingly discovered a peaceful refuge from the theater’s demand for eight shows a week.

Cast as Saint Clare in "Francis of Assisi" (1961), she met Pope John XXIII, introducing herself as "the actress playing Clare," in response to which the Pontiff ominously said, "No, you are Clare!" In 1962’s "Lisa," she portrayed a Jewish concentration camp survivor. "Taking on the part of that young woman who had been so deeply scarred," Hart remembered, "really penetrated my heart." She said, "That film was the one that made me really think about the possibility of being a nun."

On-location for "Francis of Assisi," Dolores Hart sketched a statue of the saint

Having befriended Mother Placid, the head of the Abbey of Regina Laudis, who, coincidentally, was a theater buff, Hart asked her if she could be a nun. The mother’s response was, "No, you’re too young, you go back and do your Hollywood thing." Hart recalled saying, " ‘Thank God!’ I was so relieved."

After Hart appeared in "Come Fly With Me" (1963), a frivolous comedy about three husband-hunting airline hostesses, both 20th Century Fox and MGM offered her lucrative contracts. "My career was sailing," she said. "I had always wanted to be an actress, from the time I was 17 years old. To have it happen, and to have it really come true in such an amazing, gifted way, was beyond anything I could have hoped for."

In June of 1963, she participated in an autograph signing session in New York City for "Come Fly With Me" before asking to be driven to the Abbey of Regina Laudis, where she has lived the life of a cloistered nun ever since, ultimately becoming Prioress of the Monastery. She had been engaged to successful businessman Donald Robinson and made plans for a February 1963 wedding. Following an engagement party in December of the previous year, Hart traveled to the abbey, where the Mother Abbess agreed to accept her but not until June.

"It was not a lifelong dream," Hart recalled. "I wanted to be an actress. If it had ever been suggested I would one day be a nun, it would have been the last thing on my mind. It was a million to one shot I would ever be a nun."

(Donald Robinson never married. He and Mother Dolores remained close friends. "He’s a much better Catholic than I am," she once quipped. "He has made me to be what I am." Robinson, who would visit the abbey every Easter and Christmas until his death in 2011, noted, "Every love doesn’t have to wind up at the altar.")

Dolores Hart and George Hamilton strike a pose for "Where the Boys Are"

Dolores Hart’s above-the-title role in "Where the Boys Are" (1960) led to an invitation to join  the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She resumed her status as a voting member of the Academy in 1990, when her friend and "Come Fly With Me" costar Karl Malden was president. The Academy gave her a piracy-proof DVD player to use with her two-decade old, eight-inch TV ("I never got past to the big stuff"). She admitted to seeing "Avatar" in 3-D on the big screen ("That was the most incredible thing") and voted for it as Best Picture, despite the objections of her fellow nuns, who were rooting for "The Hurt Locker."

"My vocation has been totally gratifying," Mother Dolores asserted, "and I wouldn’t want anyone thinking that in leaving Hollywood I was disappointed." According to her, "Monastic life is impossible for most people to understand. People think that it is a life that is shut off, or you’re gone from the world, but it’s exactly the opposite. You are more embedded into the world." She actively improved the abbey’s open-air theater and expanded its program for the community in Bethlehem, where, every summer, the nuns help stage musicals, including "West Side Story," "Fiddler on the Roof," "The Music Man" and "My Fair Lady."

Mother Dolores was the subject of the documentary "God Is the Bigger Elvis," directed by Rebecca Cammisa and nominated for the 2012 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject. Coming full circle, Mother Dolores attended the ceremony for her first red carpet appearance since 1960. "She’s beyond thrilled," Cammisa said. "This is a homecoming for her."

Mother Dolores noted, "Once you have decided to become a public figure you have made an agreement with your audience, and it’s a lifetime agreement. So even if you pull away there is always a part of you that you can’t just say you no longer belong. You do."

Tom Tryon (above) was a strikingly handsome leading man, recognizable by his chiseled-jaw presence in the westerns "Three Violent People" (1956), with Charlton Heston, "The Glory Guys" (1965), a fictionalized version of Custer’s Last Stand based on a screenplay by Sam Peckinpah, and "Winchester ‘73" (1967), a remake of the classic James Stewart western, as well as the all-star World War II epic "The Longest Day" (1962), not to mention the 1958 sci-fi cult favorite "I Married a Monster from Outer Space."

Tryon is probably best known for his Golden Globe Award-nominated role as an ambitious Catholic priest in "The Cardinal" (1963), a difficult production during which the actor suffered constant abuse from director Otto Preminger, who embarrassed Tryon by firing him in front of his visiting parents, only to rehire him after being satisfied that he had been satisfactorily humiliated. (The film’s liaison officer with the Vatican was Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI.) Despite the ordeal, Tryon worked with Preminger again in the World War II melodrama "In Harm’s Way" (1965), starring John Wayne and Kirk Douglas.

After his last starring role in 1970, in an Italian-produced crime thriller called "Narco Men," Tryon had become sufficiently disillusioned with acting to embark on a new career as the writer of horror and mystery novels, overcoming skepticism about an attractive Hollywood hunk remaking himself as a best-selling author.

His most popular book, among eight novels and two short story anthologies, was 1971’s The Other, about a boy whose twin brother may or may not be responsible for a series of deaths in a rural community in the 1930s. It was adapted as a hit film in 1972. Tryon’s 1973 novel Harvest Home, a tale of pagan rituals in a small New England town, was made into a 1978 TV miniseries, "The Dark Secret of Harvest Home," starring Bette Davis. Crowned Heads, a collection of novellas based on Hollywood legends, inspired the 1978 movie "Fedora," featuring Marthe Keller as a reclusive former movie star, directed by Billy Wilder.

Tryon, who became a familiar guest on talk shows with Johnny Carson and, among others, Merv Griffin, promoting his books, died from stomach cancer in 1991, age 65.

Sean Connery was reportedly offered 15% of the box-office take to play the wizard Gandalf in director Peter Jackson’s "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, which would have earned him in excess of $400 million. He turned the role down because he didn’t understand the script. Instead, he opted to star in another script which he allegedly didn’t fully grasp, "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" (2003).

The cast of characters in "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"

Connery was paid $17 million for his role as Allan Quartermain. Despite his aegis as executive producer, Connery often disputed with director Stephen Norrington ("Blade"), purportedly raising fists at one point. When the director failed to attend the movie’s premiere, Connery told reporters to "check the local asylum." Unhappy with his experience on the picture and dissatisfied with "the idiots now making films in Hollywood," he decided to retire.

This wasn’t the first time Connery "retired." Although his portrayals of James Bond in the 1960s made him an international star, he grew to dislike the role, and following "You Only Live Twice" (1967), he announced that he was "fed up to here with the whole Bond bit." After George Lazenby starred as 007 in "On Her Majesty’s Secret Service" (1969), Connery was lured back to the role with a then-record $1.25 million salary for "Diamonds Are Forever" (1971). He vowed he would never play Bond again. A dozen years later, Connery’s fee to portray James Bond one more time was $3 million, plus a percentage of the profits, as well as script and casting approval, for ""Never Say Never Again," a reworking of Connery’s 1965 "Thunderball." (The title "Never Say Never Again" was humorously suggested by Connery’s wife, Micheline.)

"Never Say Never Again" stars Sean Connery and Kim Basinger

Roger Moore spent twelve years of his life, from 1973 to 1985, portraying James Bond before he decided to retire as 007, when he realized that his 58-year-old super spy was becoming a creepy old guy. In April of 2009, he confirmed that he had completely retired from acting, although he did provide the voice for the character Tab Lazenby (a reference to one-time 007 actor George Lazenby) in "Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore" (2010), and he appeared in a cameo role in the 2011 Hallmark Channel production of "A Princess for Christmas."

In a December 2004 interview, Sean Connery stated that he was concentrating on writing his autobiography, Being a Scot, which he published on his 78th birthday in 2008. In 2005, he provided his voice as James Bond for the video game version of "From Russia With Love."

Connery denied rumors in the summer of 2007 that he would reprise his role as Harrison Ford’s father from "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" in "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull," proclaiming, "If anything could have pulled me out of retirement, it would have been an Indiana Jones film. But in the end, retirement is just too much damned fun."

Harrison Ford joked, "I’m old enough to play my own father in this one." Connery admitted, "I love working with Steven (Spielberg) and George (Lucas), and it goes without saying that it is an honor to have Harrison as my son." He wryly commented, "I do…have one bit of advice for Junior. Demand that the critters be digital, the cliffs be low, and for goodness sake, keep that whip by your side at all times in case you need to escape from the stunt coordinator!"

In 2008, 78-year-old Gene Hackman, whose last film role was a former U.S. president in the 2004 romantic comedy "Welcome to Mooseport," costarring Ray Romano, announced that his acting days were over, having reinvented himself as a novelist. At the time, Hackman and co-author Daniel Lenihan had just published their third book, a work of historical fiction set during the Civil War, Escape from Andersonville.

"I’m not going to act any longer," Hackman said. "I’ve been told not to say that over the last few years, in case some real wonderful part comes up, but I really don’t want to do it any longer." He admitted missing "the actual acting part of it…what I did for almost 60 years, and I really loved that. But the business for me is very stressful. The compromises that you have to make in films are just part of the beast, and it had gotten to a point where I just didn’t feel like I wanted to do it anymore."

Asked why he enjoys writing, Hackman replied, "I like the loneliness of it…It’s similar in some ways to acting, but it’s more private, and I feel like I have more control over what I’m trying to say and do…with books, it’s just Dan and I and our opinions. I don’t know that I like it better than acting. It’s just different. I find it relaxing and comforting."

Gene Hackman and Daniel Lenihan

Lenihan himself was impressed by Hackman’s interest in writing and "that he could write so well…I was surprised that he takes so many risks in the writing. He’s…very attentive to complexity of character…

The 2011 novel Payback at Morning Peak, an Old West tale of love and revenge, is Gene Hackman’s first effort on his own as a novelist. "Write what’s in your heart," he offered. "To be fulfilled as a writer, you have to write something that you care about."

Which is why we spend so much time writing about movies in the moviehouse.