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" Did you know that every five minutes, somewhere in America, a prominent Hollywood actor announces his or her retirement? Of course you didn&amp;#039;t know that because that statistic is not true. It&amp;#039;s completely made up. But it often feels true, because of the Internet. Whenever stars hint at taking a step away from acting, or possibly steering their film and/or television careers in a different direction, those comments inevitably generate a flurry of online headlines about how he or she is &amp;quot;retiring from acting.&amp;quot; That phrase, &amp;quot;retiring from acting&amp;quot;? Yeah, it really needs to be retired. Last week, Variety published an interview with Chris Evans \u2014 currently in the throes of heavy promotion for his latest Marvel movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier \u2014 in which Evans said he plans to &amp;quot;retire from being in front of the camera&amp;quot; (Variety&amp;#039;s words) once his Marvel-related obligations have been met. &amp;quot;If I&amp;#039;m acting at all, it&amp;#039;s going to be under Marvel contract, or I&amp;#039;m going to be directing,&amp;quot; he told the trade publication. &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t see myself pursuing acting strictly outside of what I&amp;#039;m contractually obligated to do.&amp;quot; Shortly after that article appeared online, the flurry began. &amp;quot;Chris Evans is ready to retire from acting \u2014 for real,&amp;quot; declared USA Today. &amp;quot;Chris Evans is still retiring from acting after Marvel movies,&amp;quot; noted the Huffington Post, referring to a previous, slightly less definitive statement Evans made in a Glamour interview, in which he said he merely planned to &amp;quot;take a little break&amp;quot; from acting. Cinemablend weighed in with an essay called &amp;quot;Why Chris Evans Is Retiring, and Why Other Actors Might Follow Suit.&amp;quot; Then, after all that, Chris Evans showed up on Good Morning America earlier this week and said that rumors of his retirement had been greatly exaggerated. &amp;quot;I said I directed last year and I really responded to it, I really enjoyed it, and I&amp;#039;d love to focus a little more on that,&amp;quot; he told newly appointed GMA co-anchor Amy Robach. &amp;quot;Then, [I&amp;#039;m] retiring, hanging up the shoes I guess. By no means am I planning on retiring. It&amp;#039;s kind of a silly statement.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s true, it is kind of a silly statement. But, as Vulture smartly pointed out, it&amp;#039;s also the sort of silly statement Evans has been semi-making for years, which is why Evans&amp;#039;s backtracking smelled more like damage control than a media-conducted rumor train careening out of control. But more importantly: The way the whole admittedly minor Chris Evans (non-)retirement announcement was handled highlights the three key reasons why it&amp;#039;s wrong for anyone \u2014 members of the media, fans, retweet-addicted tweeters of entertainment news \u2014 to make a fuss when an actor hints at running away from motion picture stardom. 1. Actors say this kind of thing all the time and don&amp;#039;t mean it. Back in 2008, ancient on the Internet, Vulture published this list of actors who had then-recently said, either directly or in a roundabout way, that they planned to quit the whole role-playing scene. The majority of the actors on that list \u2014 Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin Spacey, Lindsay Lohan, Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, among others \u2014 are still actively acting. More recently, other stars have hitched a ride on the same bandwagon. Last year, Ryan Gosling told the Associated Press that he planned to take a break from acting, a comment that caused a national, orange-alert level state of &amp;quot;Hey Girl&amp;quot; emergency. Gosling hasn&amp;#039;t done that, at least not in any significant way. In fact, last month, news broke that he&amp;#039;d likely be starring in and directing a biopic about Busby Berkeley.  Last summer, Johnny Depp also made a statement in a BBC interview that implied his retirement is imminent. &amp;quot;When you add up the amount of dialogue that you say per year, for example, and you realize that you&amp;#039;ve said written words more than you&amp;#039;ve actually had a chance to say your own words, you start thinking of that as kind of an insane option for a human being... I wouldn&amp;#039;t say that I&amp;#039;m dropping out any second, but I would probably say it&amp;#039;s not too far away.&amp;quot; (Leave it to Johnny Depp to make potential retirement at age 50 sound completely understandable and grounded.) Depp did qualify himself with that &amp;quot;not dropping out any second&amp;quot; comment. But given the number of movies in his immediate future \u2014 he&amp;#039;s got four slated for release this year, and a handful of others, including another Pirates of the Caribbean sequel, on the production horizon \u2014 the idea that he&amp;#039;s retiring soon seems dodgy at best. Another 50-year-old, Brad Pitt, told Australia&amp;#039;s 60 Minutes back in 2011 that he planned to retire from acting in three years. Which would be 2014. That&amp;#039;s this year, you guys! But as this Us Weekly story notes, he later backpedaled a little, saying that he wasn&amp;#039;t putting &amp;quot;an exact deadline on my expiration date, but I see it coming.&amp;quot; It does not appear to be coming in 2014; he&amp;#039;s starring in Fury, which releases later this year, and reportedly considering other projects, some as a producer and, yes, some as an actor. And then there&amp;#039;s America&amp;#039;s sweetheart, Shia LaBeouf, who tweeted in January that he was &amp;quot;retiring from all public life,&amp;quot; only to subsequently turn himself into a paper bag-wearing experimental art exhibit that generated even more media interest than he did when he was just a regular old Witwicky in a dumb but lucrative Transformers movie. On the other hand, LaBeouf did recently back out of his role in the upcoming comedy Rock the Kasbah, so maybe he&amp;#039;s half-serious about retiring? One never knows with Shia.  The point of all these anecdotes is this: Actors say they might quit constantly. Sometimes they&amp;#039;re just thinking casually and out loud during a press junket and their words get taken out of context. Sometimes they&amp;#039;re expressing a down-the-road desire \u2014 like Depp and Pitt, perhaps \u2014 but don&amp;#039;t know when or if they&amp;#039;ll actually act on it. Sometimes they may drop a retirement &amp;quot;exclusive&amp;quot; just to get some extra juice flowing in the press. And sometimes, as was the case with Joaquin Phoenix, they may just be messing with our heads, because after all, these are actors. Whatever the reason, the words &amp;quot;actor&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;retirement&amp;quot; should usually be followed by a reach for the nearest stash of salt grains.  2. The word &amp;quot;retirement&amp;quot; isn&amp;#039;t even the right word.  According to Merriam-Webster, retirement is &amp;quot;the act of ending your working or professional career,&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;the period after you have permanently stopped your job or profession.&amp;quot; Key words: ending, permanent. Think about this in terms of less glamorous, everyday professional work. If someone is working as a school teacher and decides he wants to become a high school principal, would you say that person is &amp;quot;retiring from teaching&amp;quot;? No, you would say that person is switching career tracks in his chosen field. Which is no different from what an actor does when he decides he wants to try directing or producing. Say your wife has been a stay-at-home mom for two years and gets offered a contract job in her line of work. If she takes that job, would you say she &amp;quot;came out of mommy retirement&amp;quot; to start working again? No, because that would sound pretentious and asinine. So why in 2007 did some outlets characterize Gwyneth Paltrow&amp;#039;s decision to star in Iron Man using those exact words? That&amp;#039;s because retiring, or coming out of retirement, sound more momentous and dramatic in a headline. The reality is that, unless you&amp;#039;re 70 or older and dealing with unfortunate health issues that are clearly making it impossible to continue working, you&amp;#039;re probably not retiring. So, fellow writers, editors, and bloggers, let&amp;#039;s all agree to just stop saying that, unless of course the actor in question uses that word on the record. Then we can all justifiably quote him or her as having said &amp;quot;retire,&amp;quot; even if we all know it&amp;#039;s a bunch of horse shit. 3. Media reports about actors&amp;#039; retirements are often greatly exaggerated. The confusion regarding Chris Evans&amp;#039;s career plans may not have been a clear-cut case of the media misinterpreting Captain America&amp;#039;s words. But misinterpreting and outright fabrication definitely happen. Case in point: the hubbub that erupted last September when Radar and Star magazine reported, via unnamed sources, that Jack Nicholson was retiring from acting because he was suffering from memory loss. Many reputable outlets picked up the story, eventually prompting Nicholson to clarify that he&amp;#039;s been taking fewer film roles because he only wants to do &amp;quot;films that move people.&amp;quot; In other words, his brain still works. He&amp;#039;s just being choosy. He&amp;#039;s 76-years-old and he&amp;#039;s a Hollywood legend. If you haven&amp;#039;t earned the right to be choosy at that point, when have you? The bottom line of all this is as follows: Actors should think and speak carefully before discussing their plans to leave acting; media outlets should be careful to fact-check information about such plans; news writers and editors should accurately convey the meaning of an actor&amp;#039;s words without inserting the R-word into a headline every time the superheroic star of the moment implies that maybe he&amp;#039;d like a couple weeks off around Christmas; and readers should process all of these kinds of stories with healthy doses of skepticism. As previously noted, retirement is, by definition, a pretty finite thing. Most people are smart enough to know that careers tend to be fluid. No matter what profession you&amp;#039;re in, it&amp;#039;s usually best not to close doors permanently, burn bridges, or say &amp;quot;never again&amp;quot; about anything. Once we all accept that, we&amp;#039;ll all realize that, with the occasional exception, there&amp;#039;s no sense in even reading the latest &amp;quot;actor plans to retire&amp;quot; story that flies by in our Twitter feeds. More often than not, without even clicking, we should already know it&amp;#039;s not true. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a28088/retiring-from-acting/>