Actor Jason Segel, most famous for his role in the hit sitcom “How I Met Your Mother,” recently opened up about what prompted him to move out of Los Angeles and take up residence in a small town. One of the first and most important things he pointed out was how much the move improved his mental health and helped encourage his own personal growth. I can totally understand that kind of thinking. Major cities have become stressful cesspools that do nothing but drain the soul out of a person. I can’t blame anyone for wanting to move somewhere with a slower pace of living.
Segel, appearing on the “Today” show discussed the move out of LA after the TV series ended in 2014, saying it was the best thing he’s ever done. Segel, having a conversation with Hoda Kotb, revealed that his career was doing super well when he was in his 20s. He was one of the big stars on a hit show and was writing a lot of successful film scripts, including his classic comedy, “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and the 2011 “The Muppets.”
“I was having a really roaring twenties,” Segel went on to say, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “I had How I Met Your Mother and I was also writing a bunch of movies that were successful and doing well.”
via Breitbart News:
But with his career on the move, Segel came to the realization that living in L.A. left him neglecting his own mental health. He said he wasn’t “doing a lot of personal check-ins.” ““I realized that art is supposed to be a reflection of what you’re going through and I actually wasn’t going through much life-wise,” he continued. That is when the Shrinking star decided to leave L.A. to attain a sense of peace in his life.
“I moved out of L.A.,” Segel went on to say. “I moved to a little country town and I started to ask myself questions like, ‘What do you actually like? What are you actually thinking about right now? Who do you want to be as a performer and an artist?’”
The actor said goodbye to Hollywood and hello to Ojai, California, which is a small town located in Ventura County, which satiated his appetite for living a more grounded, authentic lifestyle.
“Being there had the really interesting side-effect of realizing — after six weeks’ time, mind you — that, ‘Oh, my gosh. I finally feel calm,’” he remarked. “And it occurred to me that when you’re doing this job and living in L.A., you’re never leaving campus.”
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“So it was like this whole new experience to realize that when someone outside of Hollywood asks, ‘What are you up to?’ they mean, like, right now. So the answer is: ‘Oh. I’m on my way to the grocery store,’ not ‘I have three projects in development,’” the now 44-year-old star finished.
Segel is far from the only member of the Hollywood elite who has abandoned Los Angeles. The trend has been clear for years as celebrities have opted to leave L.A., and many even left California altogether. Entertainers including Mark Wallberg, Sylvester Stallone, Rod Stewart, Sheryl Crow, Dean Cain, Robert Davi, Nikki Sixx, Rob Schneider, Scott Baio, and Sean Patrick Flanery left years ago.
Ryan Gosling of “Barbie” and “The Notebook” among many other popular films, packed up his belongings and his wife, Eva Mendes, and left the whole country, moving to the United Kingdom. That’s how crazy big city living made these two. And that’s just one of many reasons we want to keep the Electoral College. Nobody wants big cities like New York and Los Angeles calling all the shots for the whole nation.