In honor of Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix‘s recent announcements that they’d be retiring from acting, NY Mag has put together a little compilation of “retiring actor” quotes.  Here are just some of them:

Clint Eastwood: “[Gran Torino] will probably be my last. I’ll be drummed out of it after this one. Every time you do a movie you think, ‘Aw, that’s enough of that.’”

Freddie Prinze Jr.: ‘I’m going to stop acting in the next few years because it’s just too weird.”‘

Sean Connery: “The time has come because of my rather unfortunate last movie. The cost to me in terms of frustration and avoiding going to jail for murder cannot have continued.”

Gwyneth Paltrow: “I hated acting… Acting and the whole circus around it.”

Lindsay Lohan: “I hate Hollywood and I don’t want to work there.”

Alec Baldwin: “I believe it is time for me to do something else. It’s absolutely, unequivocally time for me to do something else… I can’t do this anymore. It’s all about compromising. I hate work. I f-cking hate it in every way.”

Kevin Spacey: “I don’t care about my personal acting career any more. I’m done with it.”

Nicolas Cage: “I’m tired of it. It has made me reclusive. That is an increasingly gnawing feeling in my body.”

Hayden Christensen: “I don’t find Hollywood interesting, so I’m thinking about studying architecture instead.”

Audrey Tatou: “I know I’m not the best actress in the world and not the worst but I think that maybe I’d be happier doing something that doesn’t leave me so exposed.”

Hugh Grant:: “It’s so long and boring and so difficult to get right.”

Sting: “It’s too much hard work.”

Mena Suvari: “I don’t have a strong desire to be an actress my whole life–it’s just not fulfilling enough for me… If I hadn’t got into modeling, I probably would have studied psychology and might be working on a PHD right now.”

Madonna: “I hate to admit it, but I’ve decided to give [acting] up.”

Uma Thurman: “I am thinking about becoming a stay-at-home mom.”

Tom Selleck: “A dog was killed — trampled to death — and it really disturbed me… I remember saying to my agent, ‘If this is what it’s like, I’ve got to find another line of work.”

Elizabeth Hurley: “I decided I couldn’t really do movies any more.”

Matthew Broderick: “I should probably quit. Acting is a tough living.”

Rachel Bilson: “I love the career I have chosen, but I’d be quite happy as a housewife, at home with the kids.”

In between the two or three hours a day they have to pretend to be astronauts and princesses, actors spend all their time eating free food and having their every need attended to by an army of assistants, so I can see why they’d want to trade it all in for something real, like watching Power Point presentations or emptying colostomy bags. Really, my only question is for Tom Selleck, and what the hell movie he was talking about in his quote.

My guess?  Quigley Down Under.