Why This Actress Ditched LA for Nashville

Published: February 2, 2026

By Gavin Boyle

Patricia Heaton explained that she left LA for Nashville after realizing that Hollywood had nothing left to give her, both in her professional and personal life.

“We just thought that the taxes are high, the crime is high, the homelessness is high, and we’re not working in LA as much as we’re working outside of LA, so why don’t we leave,” the actress said while on Dave Rubin’s podcast “The Rubin Report.” “And so we just said, ‘Let’s go to Nashville,’ because we were familiar with it, we had friends there, and, you know, we really haven’t looked back.”

Heaton is one of many celebrities who have made a similar choice since 2020. It has almost become normal for major stars to leave LA and talk about the freedom that they find in a different part of the county. STRANGER THINGS star Millie Bobby Brown, for example, lives on a ranch in Georgia.

“You come from a premiere and you think you’re on top of the world, and then you go back home, and I’m shoveling donkey poo,” Brown said, explaining the difference between her two lives. “There’s really not much else to it. I mean that is truly what grounds me. I’m like ‘Oh yeah they don’t know who I am nor do they care. They just want me to feed them.’”

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Living away from the bustle of LA also allowed Brown and her husband Jake Bongiovi the ability to adopt a baby girl last summer and not have to worry about raising her in the city.

“They have really worked on creating this special family life in Georgia,” a source close to the couple told PEOPLE. “She loves her farm — it’s going to be such a special place for the baby to grow up. Even before they were married, she often spoke about her wish to be a young mom. And Jake was always on the same page. They’re in it together.”

At only 21 years old, Brown is very young to adopt, but starting a family has been at the top of her list for a long time, and she knows that being a parent is definitely worth losing time she could have otherwise put toward her career.

“Jake knows how important it is to me, and, of course, I want to focus on really establishing myself as an actor and as a producer, but I also find it’s so important to start a family for me personally,” Brown said. “It’s a huge thing. Jake was like, we cannot do that until we get married. So that was his thing.”

It will not be surprising if many more stars follow the path of Heaton and Brown, especially as the industry continues to become more fractured and less productions actually take place in LA. In fact, the golden age of the city may be coming to a close as sound stages and studios that once hosted the most popular shows now sit empty.

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