Nip/Tuck star Kelly Carlson explains why she gave up her acting career
This makes me feel so old, but I used to watch Nip/Tuck. It started in 2003 and ran through 2010. I only watched it for like three seasons or so? But some parts of it have really stuck with me, and whenever I see Julian McMahon in anything, I’m always like “creepy Nip/Tuck guy.” It was about two plastic surgeons and their absolutely insane lives and crimes. McMahon’s character, Christian Troy, had a girlfriend for a while. She was played by Kelly Carlson and she dipped in and out of the show for much of the run. She was a pretty good actress and she had an interesting look (she reminded me of a young Patsy Kensit). She never became super-famous from Nip/Tuck but she probably could have parlayed that cable-drama stardom into bigger things for her career. But at some point she married a Naval officer and she gave up acting. That’s pretty unusual in this day and age, right? She spoke about it recently on her IG Stories, and her quotes are being picked up widely:
Kelly Carlson is discussing her decision to leave acting and say goodbye to Hollywood. When a fan asked Carlson, “Are you still acting? And if not, why did you decide to give it up?” the actress confirmed, “I’m not acting right now.”
As to why she’s no longer in the business, the 44-year-old actress, who played Kimber Henry on the Ryan Murphy-created drama, explained that she and her husband, Dan Stanchfield, relocated from Los Angeles to San Diego because of his work. “Why am I not acting? Not for any reason, really. Just that we live far away. I need to be in L.A. and we’re not for my husband’s work, which is down — he’s in the Navy, so we’re way down in southern San Diego. And that’s kind of it,” she said.
Carlson — whose Instagram biography reads, “former actress of TV and Film and now Navy wife” — went on to assure that “nothing bad happened or anything like that. I loved it, loved my life up there.” She further shared that her husband “has a business where we kind of need to be out of the city too and so now he’s the star of the family and I’m the manager wife. Am I not?” she asked Stanchfield, who was watching from behind the camera and is also a survival instructor, according to his Instagram. “Yeah, exactly.”
“It was just a decision, right, so that’s all,” said Carlson. But her decision to exit Tinseltown may not last forever. “Maybe I’ll go back one day, I don’t know. I’m open. I’m kind of a free spirit. I kind of am, and I’m kind of not. But I’m always up for new experiences. And Dan is such a great guy, I’m not gonna say no. Yeah, you don’t say no to this kind. No, no. You make adjustments. And it’s not that he asked me to leave. He didn’t at all. It was like I saw a lot of value in what he was doing and so I said we have to go do it. And so we moved.”
I’ve always loved those TCM and AMC mini-biographies of old film stars because you realize that many of them did live like regular old un-famous people in those days. They had middle-class homes in LA, they married non-actors and they hid their pregnancies from the studios and the general public. That’s what this (hopefully) is: an up-and-coming actress choosing to live a less famous life as a Navy wife in San Diego. I appreciate that she said it was her choice and he didn’t ask her to leave. Still… she gave up a promising career. I hope she doesn’t have regrets!
Photos courtesy of WENN, Instagram.
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