While Deep Impact made Leelee Sobieski a huge star back in 1998, unfortunately, she never quite fit in Hollywood. By the time she walked away in 2012, she had already built an impressive filmography before turning 30. Now at 42, the former teen star has gone from movie sets to art galleries, changed her name, and built a life away from fame.
Most fans will remember Sobieski from Never Been Kissed, Eyes Wide Shut, The Glass House, or even Moby’s We Are All Made of Stars music video. She grew up in front of the cameras, starring in some of the biggest movies. In fact, she was just 15 when she played Aldys, the math club kid in Never Been Kissed, alongside big stars like Drew Barrymore, Michael Vartan, and David Arquette. She even got Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for Joan of Arc in 1999. And then, another Golden Globe nod for Uprising in 2001.
But even though she was the bright young star Hollywood was positioning for the glitz and glamor, she was struggling inside. For most actors, being cast by Stanley Kubrick in Eyes Wide Shut, alongside Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman at just 17 years old in 1999, would be a dream come true. We all believed that Leelee Sobieski was living her dream. But she wasn’t.
Why Leelee Sobieski Really Left Hollywood
By May 2012, Sobieski told IGN that public attention meant nothing to her and didn’t pay attention to it. “It’s been happening for a while now,” she said. “It’s so strange because it’s something that ends up becoming normal. … But I don’t notice.” That same year, she actually decided to step away from Hollywood forever.
There was no scandal, big announcement, comeback tease or a dramatic farewell. She just left to raise her children and to begin a new life away from acting. “I don’t do movie stuff anymore. I am totally an outsider. Just a mom and an outsider,” she told Us Weekly in 2012.
In a Vogue interview that same year, Sobieski explained, “Ninety percent of acting roles involve so much sexual stuff with other people, and I don’t want to do that.”
In 2018, speaking to AnOther magazine, she confessed that she would “cry every time I had to kiss somebody,” and felt “cheap” doing intimate scenes. “I don’t know why it’s legal for a child to act. It’s a crazy double standard, and that’s super weird for me,” she added. “Now that the MeToo movement has come forward, people understand more that it’s pretty gross and uncomfortable.”
Sobieski was describing a discomfort she’d carried for years and explaining why she’d made the choice she made.
Leelee Sobieski Changed Her Name — and Most People Never Noticed
Since August 2017, Sobieski has lived a very different life. Her Instagram, followed by nearly 45,000 people, shows paintings and sculptural works that end up in galleries. It also shows a different name. She now goes by Leelee Kimmel. She took the surname of her husband, fashion designer Adam Kimmel.
But her Instagram bio doesn’t reference any of the films. It’s just focused on her paintings. And that’s the way she wants it.
Where Leelee Sobieski Is Now
Today, Leelee Kimmel is not waiting for a call from Hollywood. She won’t be in the next DCU or MCU movie. She’s found a new career. She is now an artist. She built a new audience for work that has nothing to do with the industry she left behind.
What makes her story different from the usual “actor who left Hollywood” story is how early and how she actually did it. Kimmel gave a very few interviews, changed her name, picked up a paintbrush, and just got on with it.
The girl from Deep Impact who was supposed to be the next big Hollywood star decided she’d rather be a completely different person entirely.
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The languaging of this is odd. Traditionally women do take on their husbands surname. This has happened forever. She didn’t ’change her name’, she got married.
I appreciate the vulnerability of how Hollywood is once again exposed. We aren’t meant for make believe relationships and intimacy with people who we aren’t committed to. Thank you for writing about that.