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Celebs That Ditched The Limelight For Low-Key Jobs

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Some famous faces didn’t fade from Hollywood by choice — they just needed a paycheck.

Nicki Swift’s rundown of “Celebs That Ditched The Limelight For Low-Key Jobs” tracks a handful of familiar faces from ’90s and 2000s film and TV who wound up punching a clock instead of hitting a red carpet. Some walked away on their own terms. Others got squeezed out by an industry that, as the video puts it, is “cruel and fickle,” and had to take whatever work paid the bills. The common thread: none of them are ashamed of it.

• Geoffrey Owens, who played Elvin Tibideaux on The Cosby Show, was photographed working as a cashier at a Trader Joe’s in Clifton, New Jersey in September 2018, setting off a national conversation about working actors.
• Nate Richert, Harvey Kinkle from Sabrina the Teenage Witch, publicly backed Owens that same month, revealing he works as a maintenance man, janitor, and carpenter between songwriting gigs.
• Mike Vitar, Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez in The Sandlot, quietly left acting in the late 1990s and became a full-time Los Angeles Fire Department firefighter in 2002.

The Trader Joe’s Photo That Started a Conversation

Owens spent years as a series regular on one of the biggest sitcoms in television history, playing Elvin opposite Bill Cosby and Phylicia Rashad. Then a photo of him ringing up groceries went viral, and the internet split into two camps — one mocking him, one defending honest work. Owens later went public about the fallout, and the moment became a reference point for how Hollywood treats actors once the cameras stop rolling.

Owens’ Trader Joe’s shift turned into a national referendum on whether working a regular job is something an actor should ever have to explain.

Solidarity From Sabrina’s Harvey Kinkle

Nate Richert didn’t wait to be asked. Days after the Owens story broke, the actor who millions remember as Sabrina Spellman’s boyfriend on Sabrina the Teenage Witch took to social media to say he’s been in the same boat — working as a maintenance man, a janitor, and a carpenter to cover rent while chasing songwriting and improv on the side. It was a small but pointed gesture, an actor with real name recognition saying the stigma around blue-collar work in Hollywood needed to go.

Benny the Jet Becomes a First Responder

Mike Vitar’s transition is one of the cleaner pivots in the group. After starring as Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez in The Sandlot, one of the most quoted baseball movies of the era, Vitar stepped away from acting entirely by the late ’90s. He went a different direction than most former child stars pursuing a comeback — he became a Los Angeles firefighter in 2002 and has stayed with the LAFD ever since, trading movie sets for actual emergencies.

From Sets to Security Guard to Sitcom Star

Terry Crews’ path ran the opposite direction — low-key job first, fame later. Before he became one of the more recognizable faces on television and in film, the former NFL player went through a brutal stretch in the late 1990s that included sweeping factory floors and working security for eight dollars an hour just to support his family. It’s the kind of detail that gets left out of highlight reels, but it’s the stretch that shaped the version of Crews audiences eventually got to know.

From Gaffer Work to Weasley’s Dry Spell

Michael Maronna, known to a generation as Big Pete from The Adventures of Pete & Pete and for a role in Home Alone, didn’t chase a comeback at all — he moved fully behind the camera, building a career as a Hollywood electrician and gaffer on film sets. Chris Rankin took a messier route. After playing Percy Weasley across the Harry Potter franchise, the casting offers dried up, and he worked as a pub bartender, in retail, and eventually as a behind-the-scenes production coordinator, the same way plenty of former child stars profiled in pieces like That ’70s Show’s cast’s post-fame transformations found themselves rebuilding from scratch once the franchise ended.

What ties Maronna, Rankin, Crews, Richert, Vitar, and Owens together isn’t failure — it’s that none of them treated a regular paycheck as beneath them, even with a hit show or a blockbuster on their résumé. Owens eventually got a wave of acting offers after his story went viral, but the more lasting image is still Richert picking up a hammer and telling his followers there’s nothing to be embarrassed about.