Celebs Who Moved Out Of Hollywood For Their Kids

Many celebrities are not only based in either Los Angeles or New York, but raise their kids in one of the two metro areas. Los Angeles — and nearby cities like Beverly Hills, Bel Air, and Malibu — seems to be particularly challenging for celebrity parents, whose children might never get to experience a world outside of the spotlight. "There's nothing normal about our life," Mila Kunis once said on an episode of "Sunday Today with Willie Geist." "My kids' version of normal is incredibly different."

As such, it is not entirely surprising that many celebs have decided to move away from Hollywood. In 2021, three actors even made a pact to move to Austin, Texas, together. The stars — Haylie Duff, Becca Tobin, and Jamie-Lynn Sigler — all decided Los Angeles was not where they wanted to raise their families, per The New York Times.

Austin has become a hotbed for celebrity transplants — everyone from Joe Rogan to James Marsden — but it's not just Texas drawing people away from LA. Some are living in big cities like Chicago, like Jenny McCarthy and Donny Wahlberg, while others are completely off the grid in places like Montana, where Kelly Clarkson owns a ranch, per Life & Style. Celebrities are popping up all over the country, including in more rural areas where they can live more simply and away from the cameras. Here is a collection of celebrities who moved out of Hollywood to raise their kids out of the glare of the paparazzi.

Being as famous as she is, Julia Roberts' love life has always been widely featured in the tabloids. Per Closer Weekly, she's been linked to stars such as Kiefer Sutherland and Liam Neeson, was engaged to Dylan McDermott, and at one point had a short marriage to country crooner Lyle Lovett. She continued to date famous men after her divorce, but it was not until she started seeing a non-celebrity that Roberts found her happy ending. She met camera operator Danny Moder on the set of "The Mexican," and despite Moder being married, the couple began a romance, per Us Weekly.

Roberts and Moder have three children — Hazel, Phinnaeus, and Henry — and they have made a point to keep them out of the limelight and out of Hollywood. The family has multiple homes but spend much of their time on their ranch in Taos, New Mexico. According to Architectural Digest, Roberts owned the ranch prior to getting married, but she and Moder made it their main residence after the birth of their twins in 2004. At one point, the family appeared to have settled in Malibu, but as the star told Extra in 2022, they are now using their San Francisco home as their main base. "I think moving with three teenagers during a pandemic is not for the faint of heart, but we have pulled it off and everyone seems good and happy," Roberts said.

Jeff Daniels has been appearing on screens for more than four decades and, though many people know his name, he has never been the kind of celebrity you see splashed across magazine covers at the supermarket. This is exactly how the actor wants it, too, as he has ensured his private life remains private. Since 1986, Daniels has been living full-time in his home state of Michigan to, as he explained to People, "create as much a sense of normalcy as possible." It is in Michigan that Daniels and his wife Kathleen raised their now-grown children Ben, Lucas, and Nellie.

Daniels moving his brood to Chelsea, Michigan, while still maintaining a successful acting career was virtually unheard of in the 1980s, before we had the kind of technology that would make business meetings and auditions easy to do from afar. But he has said that he never really got into the general idea of fame, and that it was a no-brainer to move back to where both he and his wife grew up. He said on "Conan," "After 10 years in New York, we said, 'Why don't we just go home and live there, because the career is going to end.'" And while we are sure Daniels is somewhat joking, it is nice to hear about a celebrity who does not think their entire life is the work that they do. As he told People, "Careers are job to job, you're hot, you're not."

Matthew McConaughey may have lived in Los Angeles for many years, but he's always been a Texan at heart. The Oscar winner moved back to his home state in 2012. According to E! News, family was the big reason for the relocation, as McConaughey was at the time engaged to his now-wife Camila Alves, and together they had two young kids. "I grew up here. We got children, family values, neighbors and common sense—and I can catch a greenlight in Texas," he said. Since then, he has somehow become even more Texan and he was even a potential candidate for governor at one point before he announced on Twitter that he'd pulled his name from contention.

McConaughey and Alves settled in Austin, which is a few hours outside of Uvalde, Texas, where McConaughey grew up. They now have three kids — Levi, Vida, and Livingston — and live in a 10,800 square foot mansion, per Hello! magazine. "We lived in Malibu for many years and having the paparazzi outside our door every day — every single day — when that becomes your normal, you don't realize how much that's actually affecting the things you do until you actually leave and get out of it," Alves said in a 2022 Fox News interview. "The kids get to have a private way of growing up. So from that perspective, it was very important."

Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively were famous before they got together, but when they became a couple, their celebrity level reached new heights. People are fascinated by their every move, no doubt in part because the pair purposefully live far away from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. And though they are close enough to New York City, their Upstate New York property is somewhat of a safe haven from their many fans. According to E! News, Reynolds and Lively have lived in a large mansion near Bedford, New York, since 2012, which is the year they wed. They have since welcomed three children — Inez, James, and Betty. Lively is pregnant with their fourth child, who is due sometime in early 2023.

According to Hello! magazine, their home (and barn, also on their 11+ acres) is located in Pound Ridge, which is roughly an hour north of Manhattan. "They moved to the suburbs, which has a pretty conservative lifestyle. They also picked a very traditional kind of house for people who work in Hollywood," an insider told People. "They wanted a house with character, not a trendy, modern house. Their place is very homey." Though their life is quieter up in the burbs, Lively has still had to call out the paparazzi on numerous occasions. For example, in September 2022, she posted a selection of photos of her pregnancy to Instagram, with the hopes that it would force the "11 guys waiting outside" to retreat.

Upstate New York is a popular location for celebrities who want to be close enough for a jaunt to New York City but far enough away from the hustle and bustle of The City That Never Sleeps. A surprising number of these famous folks live the farm life. Mark Ruffalo is one such celeb — something that tracks with his consistent environmental advocacy and promotion of climate justice. Ruffalo and his family have chosen to live a simple life on a dairy farm in Callicoon, New York, per The Guardian. Callicoon is nearly a two-and-a-half-hour drive from New York City, and about an hour away from Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Per Hollywood Life, Ruffalo and his wife Sunrise Coigney have three children: Keen, Bella, and Odette. The family has had homes in New York City and Los Angeles, per Dirt, but it is in Callicoon that they have made their biggest mark. According to Nowness, their property has a vegetable garden, a barn, and a guest house. "It's the best thing I could have done for the family as a whole and for the kids in particular," Ruffalo told the publication in 2011, referencing their move. "We live in a small space and we're really influenced by the natural world around us. Eventually that is reflected in one's behavior and how you get along with other people. There's a lot of quiet in the country and there's a lot of quietness in my children."

If you watched "Friday Night Lights" — and if you have not, what are you waiting for? — then you likely think about Texas when you see Kyle Chandler, who played coach Eric Taylor on the West Texas-set series. Though the show was set in the fictional town of Dillon, much of the series was filmed in Austin, per Curbed Austin. And Chandler liked the city so much that he and his wife Kathryn decided to make the move permanent. According to The Hollywood Reporter, they moved from Los Angeles to Austin in 2009, which would have been in the middle of the "Friday Night Lights'" run.

The Chandlers have two daughters who are now both of age but who would have been about 13 and seven when the family made the move, per People. According to Men's Journal, they settled on a ranch just outside of the city, in Dripping Springs, Texas, where Chandler quickly became a volunteer firefighter and the family adopted a slew of dogs and donkeys. And by all accounts, the animals have plenty of room to roam. As Chandler shared on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" in 2019, the ranch is on a whopping 33 acres of land. That is the kind of space you are not going to get in the middle of a city.

Since "Grey's Anatomy," Katherine Heigl has continued to find work in television shows such as "Suits" and "Firefly Lane." That has to be tough, given that Heigl and her family are rooted in Utah. According to The New York Times, the TV star has had a home in Utah for over two decades, well before she married singer Josh Kelley. But Kelley was clearly on board, as the couple scooped up a place just under an hour away from Salt Lake City, on a ranch with 25 acres of land and a ridiculous amount of animals, per Good Housekeeping. 

Heigl and Kelly have three kids — Naleigh, Adelaide, and Joshua — and they are all about raising them away from Hollywood. "We had big dreams of expanding our family, moving to the mountains and having a quieter life," Heigl told Good Housekeeping in 2014. "Utah is spectacularly beautiful, the people are wonderful and kind, it's an easy commute from L.A. — and there's no traffic!" Not only that, but Park City, which is near where Heigl lives, is quite glamorous and elite. Other celebrities who have homes in Utah include Ty Burrell, Michael Jordan, and Robert Redford, per Deseret News.