John Cusack Just Revealed Why He Ghosted Hollywood

John Cusack is done playing the studio game—and honestly? We can’t blame him. The actor just spilled the tea on why he stepped back from his decades-long film career, and it’s all about the money and the control freaks running the show.

“When you ask somebody to put $20 million or $30 million into a bank account [for a film], they wanna have an opinion and they’re afraid and all that stuff,” Cusack said. Translation: The second studios fork over massive budgets, they turn into helicopter parents, micromanaging every creative decision and basically sucking the soul out of filmmaking.

For someone who’s been in the game since the ’80s—hello, Say Anything, The Sure Thing, High Fidelity—Cusack clearly got tired of answering to nervous bean counters worried about ROI instead of actual art. Can’t fault a guy for wanting creative freedom back.

So yeah, don’t expect to see Cusack on a massive studio lot anytime soon. He’d rather keep his integrity intact than deal with the corporate nightmare that modern Hollywood has become.

Based on reporting from Page Six.