\nYoung stars in Hollywood seem to have it all. Fame, money, and good looks; people often seem to idealize their lives. They make everything seem so easy! So when a teen star decides to give it all up, it always comes as a shock.\n
The story we have for you today also has a similar theme. A young Hollywood actor who was beloved by millions or women around the world, decided there is more to life than the silver screen.\n
This is not a new theme in the world of entertainment. Keep reading to know more about what happened.\n
He famously appeared as a child actor on \u201cGrowing Pains,\u201d and from there on out, he became one of the most popular actors of the 1980s. He was a regular feature on the covers of teen magazines. While it seemed he had it all, he was grappling with the reality of being a young star in Hollywood, and to him, it was not all that enticing.\n
Young Kirk Cameron did not intend to become an actor, in fact he wanted to be a doctor. His dream was to be a surgeon but his career took a completely different path when his mother who after being encouraged by a friend, introduced her young son to acting. His sister, Candace Cameron Bure is also an actress who has been acting since she was a child! She is best know for her role in Full House.\n
\n
The friend was actually fellow child star Adam Rich\u2019s mother. Rich was widely known for his role in \u2018Eight is Enough.\u2019 She suggest her friend take her son to agents and try their luck for commercials. His mother reluctantly followed the advice but it ended up going well for them since Cameron started looking small roles. Among some of his first acting gigs was a commercial for McDonald\u2019s. While Cameron did not enjoy acting, he was consistently getting offers.\n
\u201cI was always annoyed having to brush my hair and tuck my shirt in to go drive an hour in traffic to audition,\u201d he revealed later about his early days of stardom. Despite the fact that he himself was not enthusiastic about acting, he soon got his role as Mike Seaver in \u201cGrowing Pains,\u201d and the rest was history.\n
But he was struggling internally whether Hollywood was where he needed to be. And then he had something call to him; his faith.\n
When he was growing up, his family was not religious. The actor said, \u201cWhen I was growing up, we didn\u2019t go to church.\u201d\n
\u201cIf you had asked me, I would have said I would be in the category of an atheist at 16 years old, 17 years old,\u201d he surprisingly revealed later.\n
\u201cI think I caught my atheism\u2014it was by contagion,\u201d he shared, he was referring to his teachers who taught him science and other subjects and regarded religion as \u201cjust a fairy tale.\u201d\n
A chance encounter made the young boy reconsider his relationship with faith.\n
He met a girl he liked, and she asked him to attend church with her and her family. \u201cI\u2019ll be honest. It wasn\u2019t because I was interested in God. I was interested in the girl,\u201d he later admitted in a conversation.\n
However the visit to the church changed his life and the impact of it was even visible to his friends in Hollywood.\n
The 17-year-old\u2019s real-life experience with his faith began to influence how he approached his role in \u201cGrowing Pains.\u201d The show runners and his co-stars did not let this change go unnoticed.\n
The producers worried that the young boy\u2019s new found devotion to his faith would affect how he would approach the show and in turn affect the show and its longevity itself.\n
\u201cIs he getting into something that\u2019s really gonna take him into Looney Town? And if it is, we need to stop that,\u201d he recalled what the concerns surrounding him at the time had been..\n
\u201cI was trying to take the moral high road. I wanted to please God genuinely, and I think sometimes that got misunderstood,\u201d he says now. His priorities however had taken a major shift and people around him were concerned.\n
His heart slowly began to dislike his life in Hollywood. The actor later recalled, \u201cThe evil, the darkness, the twisted sickness of Hollywood has been going on for a long time.\u201d\n
His personal dialogue coach from the show, Brian Peck, has since then been highlighted for his role in the abuse doled out to young child stars in the industry. He was heavily featured as a perpetrator in a recent documentary uncovering crimes.\n
All of this reinforced Cameron\u2019s initial thoughts that Hollywood was driven by power, pride, and ego. When he was younger, these realizations are what made him give up his promising acting career.\n
He became more steadfast in his faith, believing this is what would protect him. \u201cWhen that becomes your God, rather than the God who laid down His life on a cross 2,000 years ago, you\u2019re in for a world of hurt,\u201d he shared.\n
He was only 20 when he married his \u201cGrowing Pains\u201d co-star Chelsea Noble. Cameron had officially left Hollywood in his past and the two started building their life together. The couple have six children together, four of whom are adopted.\n
Adoption is something him and his wife both care deeply about as she herself had been adopted. They always made sure their adopted kids knew about their origins and helped them reconnect with their biological families when they were old enough to understand everything.\n
In 2021, Cameron revealed his intention to leave not just Hollywood but California itself behind. He took to social media to share his decision. He said, \u201cI asked on social media what states people recommend for a Californian looking to relocate, and the top responses were Tennessee, Florida, and Texas,\u201d he posted on Facebook.\n
Cameron shared how he thought California had increasingly grown unsafe and he wanted a place with more \u201cwholesome values.\u201d\n
He moved to Tennessee because three of his children also lived there. This gave the family an opportunity to be together as well. The family also enjoys the slower pace of life that Tennesse offers them. He also enjoyed the \u201chealthy freedom mindset\u201d that Tennessee provided them with, which was something he felt did not exist in California.\n
He also think that Tennessee is a \u201chub for Christian projects.\u201d Cameron was able to be close to family which really paid off when he became a grandfather in summer 2024. He shared the news of his granddaughter Maya Jeanne Noble Bower to social media.\n
\u201cOur hearts are filled to overflowing,\u201d he wrote in his post. \u201cOur beautiful baby girl just had a beautiful baby girl, and we can hardly wait to spend every minute with her and shower her with love.\u201d\n
Apart from his new real life role as a grandfather, Cameron also continued his work as an actor. In 2022 he released his film \u2018Lifemark\u2019 which highlighted the beauty of life and adoption. The project was a personal passion for him as four of his own children are adopted as well as his wife\u2019s own personal history with being an adopted child.\n
It is heartwarming to see Kirk Cameron fulfill his passions both professionally and personally. Share this with other fans of the actor so they can know what he has been up to!\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Teenage heartthrob left Hollywood to focus on family Young stars in Hollywood seem to have it all. Fame, money, and good looks; people often seem to idealize their lives. They make everything seem so easy! So when a teen star decides to give it all up, it always comes as a shock. The story we\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":97479,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[670],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-97476","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/728.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97481,"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97476\/revisions\/97481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}