Anna Chlumsky quit Hollywood for a happier life

Grown-up child star Anna Chlumsky turned her back on showbusiness following the success of her My Girl movies after realizing she'd be a lot happier without all the negative feedback.

The actress, who is now one of the stars of hit HBO network comedy Veep, stepped away from Hollywood in her late teens, because the chase for a dream role was making her miserable.

"Adolescence in the business is so fraught," she told Entertainment Weekly magazine. "I was told I wasn't getting certain roles because I was too heavy, even though I wasn't.

"I worked a little in college and then I remember auditioning one day and getting back into my car, putting the script on the passenger seat and going, 'I just don't have to feel this way anymore'.

"(I realized) not everyone who played football in high school went on to be a player. I stopped paying my SAG (Screen Actors Guild) dues right then."

Chlumsky realized she still had a lot to offer as an actress some years later after working as a fact-checking assistant for world-famous dining guide Zagat and stumbling into a theater production in Queens, New York.

"The first day I was there I was like, 'I'll do this forever. I don't even care if I don't get a job...'" Anna recalled. "I was like, 'I'm a working theater actor now'."

And now, after five years on Veep, she's back at the top of her game and drawing up a wish list of the people she would like to work with.

They include Tom Hardy and Idris Elba.

"I will see them in anything," she squealed to Madison Avenue magazine. "Not just because they’re gorgeous; because they are phenomenal actors. I love Rooney Mara. I think she’s fantastic... (and) Robert Duvall in anything, right?"