Portia De Rossi Has Quit Acting

May 16, 2018 / Posted by:

One could argue that Portia de Rossi is most well-known at this point in her career as playing Lindsay Bluth-Fünke on Arrested Development (Ally McBeal fans just shrieked at me, I know it). And I’m sure if she only appeared in sporadic seasons of Arrested Development for the rest of her life as an actress, nobody would wonder why she wasn’t really appearing in too much else. As it turns out, Portia has pretty much quit acting, and she came very close to throwing in the towel completely.

Portia appeared on her wife’s show today to talk about the upcoming fifth season of Arrested DevelopmentEllen DeGeneres spilled the beans that Portia had quit acting recently. Portia says she chose to leave acting 18 months ago, and was ready to walk away from acting the second Shonda Rhimes wrote her off Scandal. Portia played Elizabeth North on Scandal from 2014 to 2017, which she thought would be her last acting job. Portia says she was turning 45 (or “aging out“, as Ellen joked) and she wanted to focus on something different. She was so determined to not be an actress anymore, that she told Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz not to bother calling her for a fifth season. He didn’t listen.

“I called Mitch Hurwitz, and I said ‘If there is a season five, I won’t be doing it because I quit acting.’ And he seemed really understanding and he totally got it, we had a great conversation. And then he wrote me into five episodes.”

Portia’s back for season five, but don’t count on her for six and on. She’s kind of dedicated to her new life of non-acting.

“I just kind of was wondering, ‘Is there something I could tackle now that I’ve never done before that would be really challenging and different.’ And I kind of knew what acting would look like for me for the next 10, 20 years. So I decided to quit and start a business.”

E! News reports that Portia’s business is an art curation and publishing company called General Public. Ellen’s net worth is supposedly $400 million. I would fully expect a multi-millionaire like Ellen to be married to either an actress or an art curator. Or maybe a mysterious diamond-enthusiast who goes by one single name, always carries a Persian cat, and releases an album of Taylor Dayne covers for everyone at Christmas. It’s not too late, Portia.

Pic: Ellen

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