10 Disney Channel Alums Who Aged into Surprising Careers

You would think that any child actor who got their start on a high-profile Disney Channel would just remain in the business for their entire lives. In fact, many of them have! Demi Lovato, Raven Symoné, and Selena Gomez come to mind. (Not to mention the likes of Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake from a generation before that, too.) After all, getting a start like that as a young kid would line a person up for untold riches, fame, and adulation for the rest of their lives, right?

But interestingly, not every Disney Channel alum decides to stay in the business. In fact, many former child stars quickly check out of Hollywood altogether! And yes, this even includes stars you know very well—and maybe even stars that you grew up watching on television! In this list today, we’ll take a fascinating look at the life paths of ten of those stars. These ten former child stars rose to fame on the Disney Channel. But when they got to the pinnacle of their young careers, they all decided to go do something else instead. These are their stories…

Related: 10 Actors Who Turned Down Movie Roles and Regretted It

10 Ashlie Brillault

Actress Ashlie Brillault grew up playing the character of Kate Sanders on the Lizzie McGuire series. But as she aged out, she eventually decided that acting wasn’t for her. So, instead, she went off to college after filming for the show wrapped up. She attended California State University Long Beach, where she studied political science and government. After graduating, she matriculated to the University of Denver to get a degree in law.

Ever since then, she’s been working happily in the legal world! She got a job as a lawyer right out of law school and eventually worked her way up to becoming a partner in the law offices of David Givot back in southern California. She reflected on her desire to do something bigger than television, too. “My ultimate goal is to work on issues related to criminal justice reform,” she said once in a 2015 interview. It seems like she’s done just that!^[2]

9 Clayton Snyder

Back in the day, Clayton Snyder played the iconic heartthrob Ethan Craft on Lizzie McGuire. However, just like Brillault, he decided to take a break from acting once he got to the end of his high school days. Instead of continuing on in show business, he instead went off to college at Pepperdine University in Malibu. And from there, he became a very good water polo player. So good, in fact, that he actually played it professionally for a time in Italy after graduation! Then, he transitioned into a full-time career in real estate. And he’s been selling homes ever since!

To him, the funniest part of his life now is when a homebuyer suddenly recognizes who he is and where they know him from. “We’ve had plenty of clients where halfway through showing them homes, they’re like, ‘My wife and I just found out who you are, and we can’t believe it!’” he told E! News about his two worlds sometimes coming together. “But that makes me feel good because I know that’s not why they’re working with me. It’s the best of both worlds, where they have the fun of realizing that, but their actual entry point was because of the work that we do.”^[2]

8 Nick Spano

Nick Spano rose to fame as a child star by playing the older brother Donnie on Disney’s Even Stevens sitcom. After that show wrapped, he tried his hand at a few more television series, too. But eventually, he grew tired of the acting grind. So he opted to go to UCLA for college. After graduating, he went into business—opening up a spa as well as a market management firm. Then, in 2015, he pulled another major career switch by opening up a coffee house-slash-restaurant in Los Angeles called Re/creation Café. There, he hosts community art shows and other social events for locals.

“Re/creation Café is a creative community space and eatery,” he once explained to the local news outlet VoyageLA. “It’s a place where people come to play and connect through good food, art, and music. Our goal is to get people (specifically adults) playing again. There really is nothing out there like Re/creation at this time. We are known for our events, such as Paint Social, Play, Goddess Celebration, Rave on Wheels, Yamashiro Night Market, and Love is Blind, but the cafe is something different.” Well, good for him. It sounds like he’s found what he is meant to do after all that child acting!^[3]

7 Kay Panabaker

Kay Panabaker’s whole life was devoted to the Disney Channel during her childhood. She appeared on several different shows, including Phil of the Future, Life Is Ruff, and Read It and Weep. But then, in 2012, she stepped away from acting for a bit to go to college. And she never returned!

She first went to UCLA to study zoology. After finishing there, she transitioned to Santa Fe College in Florida in an animal husbandry program. Now, she’s back to working with Disney—but not in the way you might be assuming! In her adult life, Kay actually works with various wild animals at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in central Florida. So she’s still in the Disney family… just not anywhere close to being on screen!

“Looking back, finding my true passion was worth all of the extra time,” Panabaker once told Naperville Magazine about her slow move to finally work with animals rather than keep on with her acting career. “I work with some of the most incredible people who inspire me to work harder and make a bigger difference in the world. That aspect was missing in my previous career and is something that feeds my soul in my current line of work. I love it when I leave work and have felt like I was able to inspire and make a difference, even if it was just one person that day. I don’t earn a fraction of what I used to, and yet, I couldn’t be happier.” We love to hear that!^[4]

6 Amy Bruckner

Amy Bruckner got her start on the Disney Channel when she appeared as a cast regular on Phil of the Future. In that show, she played Phil’s younger sister, Pim Diffy. She was there for the show’s entire run, and she became a well-known star to millions of young people who quite literally grew up watching her on television. However, when it came time for her to grow up, Amy wanted to do something totally different. Always precocious and forever a great public speaker, the law was what called her name!

After wrapping the series, Bruckner matriculated to New York University. There, she studied human rights and feminist theory. Then, after graduation, she returned to Los Angeles and attended UCLA School of Law. Now, she works at a law firm in Los Angeles that represents movie studios, television networks, production companies, and other entities. So, she’s still in entertainment! Just at a much higher level than as a child actor. Oh, and one more tidbit: she goes by Amelia now rather than Amy. Clearly, her adult life has come full circle and is far different from who she was as a child!^[5]

5 Jennifer Stone

Jennifer Stone was a star on Wizards of Waverly Place opposite Selena Gomez. On the show, she played the best friend of the main character, Alex—a girl named Harper. But after the show ended and Gomez transitioned into super stardom as a pop music sensation, Jennifer took a very different route. She gave up acting, went to school, and eventually decided to become an emergency room nurse! That decision came about after she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in her own personal life. She became interested in medicine and decided that she wanted to help other people along the way.

“Regardless of your background, circumstances, choices, we’re all very much the same—and acting gives you that gift,” Stone reflected once on her acting career in an interview with Deadline about her choice to go into the nursing profession. “In nursing, you come across so many different kinds of people that to be able to view people that way is such a gift.”

She continued from there: “For so long, I’ve developed characters and just explored human nature and what makes people, people. I think it strengthens your sense of empathy and it strengthens your area of questioning why people do what they do. It also leads me to an understanding that people are very much the same.” What an amazing realization. We love to see it—a child star who turned out perfectly well-adjusted and is doing something for the betterment of society^[6]

4 Morgan York

Morgan York made a name for herself at a very young age when she landed a role opposite Miley Cyrus on Hannah Montana. But television didn’t turn out to be everything she wanted as she got older. At some point, the job became more of a job and less of a fun endeavor as she aged out of her youngest years. So she moved on. After acting, she pursued a career in literature. Today, she works at a publishing house. She is even hoping to become a published author herself at some point in the future!

Looking back on her short but successful acting career as an adult, York once explained her reason for transitioning out of the industry in a TikTok video: “I started acting when I was 9, and from the beginning, my mom told me, ‘The second this becomes not fun, or you want to stop, you can stop.’ I never expected it to be a lifetime thing. I even remember as a kid trying to imagine myself as an adult actor and just not seeing it.”

She wasn’t done there, either. The former child star continued with more about her decision to walk away from acting: “It wasn’t fun anymore. My passion for acting did not outweigh all the costs, like all the time you have to spend away from loved ones on sets and the constant scrutiny from people watching you.” Honestly, that sounds like a very mature and sensible decision to us.^[7]

3 Daniel Lee Benson

Daniel Lee Benson has had quite the road after quitting acting. He played Zeke on Wizards of Waverly Place. After the show wrapped, he initially decided to walk away from the world of theater and television. However, as he aged into being a full-grown adult, he began to receive messages threatening blackmail. That’s because leaked pictures of himself in suggestive photos were being spread online and posted on adult websites. For a long time, Benson tried desperately to scrub all that content from the internet. But the pictures just kept getting passed around and re-shared. And things got so bad that he almost lost his job!

Sick of continually dealing with that part of his past, Daniel decided to flip the switch on it and join OnlyFans. Amazingly, he built up a large following. And he also received a ton of support from fans who have continued to follow his, um, interesting second career. “I decided to stop fighting against it and, instead, go the other direction and completely lean into it and build out a page instead of letting these people sell my privacy,” Daniel shared in a very revealing TikTok about his unexpected career move. “I’ve met a lot of really great people in the adult entertainment industry, and it’s changed my life for the better.” Well, all good, just as long as he feels that positively about it, we suppose…^[8]

2 Tiffany Thornton

Tiffany Thornton was Demi Lovato’s closest co-star back in the days when the two of them were on Sonny with a Chance. But after that show ended, and Demi moved onto huge heights in the pop music industry, Tiffany shifted away from the Hollywood world. Instead of continuing to act, she left the screen and stage behind. And she became… a cheerleading coach! For a while, she worked as a recruiter at a Christian college in Arkansas. But she eventually found her way back to the thing that she really loved the most—cheerleading.

Ever since, she has been mentoring teenage girls and young women in a positive way while teaching them the value of cheerleading. “I absolutely love working here and seeing how God moves in the lives of these students,” Tiffany wrote of her decision to move into the world of cheerleading in a very appropriately peppy Instagram post back in 2017. “Plus, they come to my house a few times a semester for a big get-together where I make chicken spaghetti, salad, and banana pudding for dessert.” Wow. That sounds like a wonderful life!^[9]

1 Bridgit Mendler

When Good Luck Charlie made it to the Disney Channel, millions of viewers watched Bridgit Mendler steal the show as its star. But after the series wrapped, she took a complete left turn away from acting. And what she’s doing now will REALLY shock you! First, she attended the prestigious University of Southern California. Then, she got a master’s degree in humanity and technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Then, she went on to earn a PhD from MIT while simultaneously getting a law degree from the world-renowned Harvard Law School. We’re tired just thinking about all that!

After all those graduations came and went, Mendler then took a job at the Federal Communications Commission working in… wait for it… their Space Bureau! Yes, really! She “completely fell in love with space law” while there, as she told the media later. She came to love space so much that she eventually left that job and started her own company called Northwood Space. That company is tasked with building ground stations that can link up to satellite dishes that fly high in the sky, miles and miles above the Earth. And it’s already raised millions of dollars in early-stage startup funding!

“The vision is a data highway between Earth and space,” Mendler revealed to CNBC when they asked her about the company. “Space is getting easier along so many different dimensions, but still, the actual exercise of sending data to and from space is difficult. You have difficulty finding an access point for contacting your satellite.” Impressive to see that a Disney Channel alum turned to that level of work after teenage stardom. We love to see it!^[10]

fact checked by
Darci Heikkinen