Bye-Bye, Amanda Bynes! Who Should Retire Next?

Lindsay Lohan? Miley Cyrus? Kristen Stewart? Mary-Kate Olsen? Who else should join the 24-year-old Bynes in the Young Actress Retirement Home?

By Leslie Gornstein Jun 21, 2010 9:20 PMTags
Lindsay Lohan, Mary- Kate Olsen, Kristen Stewart, Miley Cyrus, Amanda BynesMAC/Fame Pictures; Dave Hogan/Getty Images; Elisabetta A. Villa/WireImage; Norman Scott/startraksphoto.com; Kristian Dowling/Getty Images for IMG

Of all the young actresses announcing "retirement," it had to be Amanda Bynes? There's plenty of others I'd like to see on the retirement list instead.
—JarV, Wisconsin, via the Answer B!tch inbox

I do agree that Lindsay Lohan probably should decide whether she wants to commit to acting—or retire in her mid-20s like Amanda Bynes just did—once she wraps that movie about Linda Lovelace.

So who else should join them in the Young Actress Retirement Home?

Much of what makes a young actress's success these days is, unfortunately, her fame—her ability to get a picture green-lit or financed by sheer celebrity power. For Bynes, that wattage peaked seven years ago, when she starred in the TV series What I Like About You, and her film What a Girl Wants was in theaters.

Since then, her career—and, with it, her recognizability—has dipped (with the exception of 2007, when she had a brief rally boosted by Hairspray).

It's simply harder to find good parts when you can't green-light a picture, and Bynes's clear frustration with the industry may have been borne out of that fact. If you're going to retire from Hollywood, that's as good of a reason as any; in a way, I can't blame her.

Now, about the rest of the retirement-age Kitson crowd:

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen don't seem to have their hearts in the acting game anymore, either. Mary-Kate's next movie project has been bumped to 2011, her peak hit six years ago, during the hype for New York Minute, of all things, and there's nothing else lined up for either her or her sister. (Maybe the latter has retired from acting and simply hasn't Tweeted it. That would be so classy as to be unnerving.)

Kristen Stewart is another actress who comes to mind.

She can deliver a nuanced performance—see Adventureland, for example—and her No. 1 ranking on the IMDB Starmeter is a decent indication that she could pretty much green-light any project she put her mind to, and that's huge.

But her continued, tin-eared complaints about fame and clear misery in front of still cameras make me wonder whether she's really having any fun out there. If she isn't, there sure are plenty of other hungry actresses out there who'd love to take her place.

I know based on emails and Tweets I get, some of you are thinking Miley Cyrus should be on this list, too. After all, her performance in The Last Song, her first non-Hannah Montana role, didn't exactly put her into Dakota Fanning territory.

Still, Cyrus can open a picture, she has four films lined up for future production, and she seems eager to improve and to please—which is a lot more than we can say about Stewart, or the Olsens, for that matter.

In that sense only—and yes, I am saying this—I'd rather see Cyrus stick around more than any of the others. What about you?

Follow @answerbitch on Twitter!

________

PHOTOS: Amanda isn't in any of our Movies From the Future!