Hallmark Channel fan favorite Ryan Paevey is known for regularly appearing in the network’s holiday rom-coms.
However, after starring in 2023’s “Under the Christmas Sky,” he decided to press the pause button on his acting career — a break that lasted for a full two years.
Now that he’s resumed his Hollywood career (he has two Christmas films for Great American Family set to arrive this holiday season), he’s opening up about the factors underlying his decision to step away from acting.
A Psychologically Challenging Profession
Sitting down with Us Weekly to promote one of those upcoming GAF Films, “The Christmas Ornament,” Paevey spoke candidly about what contributed to his decision.
“Anybody who’s worked in this industry will tell you it’s harder than it looks from the outside, particularly psychologically,” Paevey said.
“It’s heavy on the mind. There’s a significant amount of rejection involved. There’s a significant amount of intrusion into privacy involved,” he continued.
Another factor was his mother’s cancer diagnosis in the spring of 2024, which contributed to the uneasiness he’d already been feeling.
“Even before that, I wanted to — I wasn’t happy in Los Angeles. I was kind of just shut away in my apartment, and my lifestyle was not terribly healthy at the time,” Paevey recalled. “[It] made me very reclusive, and I was kind of depressed.”
‘I Just Needed a Break’
ABCThat was when he decided the time had come to take a break from acting — and Los Angeles.
“I left the city. I moved down here [to San Diego]. I’m a couple miles away from mom. Spent more time outside exercising. I own a jewelry business on the side. I kind of focused on that,” he shared.
“I just needed a break. I needed to be in something different. I needed, like, a total palate cleanse. So I moved.”
During his hiatus, he spent a lot of time working on the “nice garden” at his new home, where he’s become known as “the neighborhood hobbit” to locals.
“I needed a total change,” he explained. “Everything, mailing address, surroundings, work. I just needed everything to be different, and so I did. I moved. I came down here close to mom. Got an old truck.”
Altering everything in his life proved to be the solution to his malaise.
“I changed everything,” he shared. “And it was cleansing. It was healing. It was good.”
A ‘Bitter Taste’
Now that the former “General Hospital” star has resumed his acting career with “The Christmas Ornament, he’s deleted the social media posts from two years earlier announcing his departure from Hollywood.
“The last 8 months of life in this industry have left a pretty bitter taste in my mouth, and i need some time away from a world so full of fake friends and empty promises. I’m weary,” he wrote in a since-deleted Instagram post in 2024.
“The industry hasn’t felt like the place for me in quite some time now,” he reiterated in a statement to EntertainmentNow, “and my mental health has suffered from it. It’s taken me to a bit of a dark place, made me into a version of myself I don’t like very much.”
