Featured Image Credit: Adam Taylor/Disney Channel via Getty Images / Eric McCandless/Disney Channel via Getty Images
Topics: Disney
Yasmeen Hamadeh
Topics: Disney
Disney Channel's golden heyday may have given us a slew of stars like Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus, but other Disney alums preferred to choose a quieter life.
From ditching acting to pursue a career in nursing, to taking on roles as zookeepers at Disney World, here's a list of Disney Channel stars who now work in regular ol' day jobs just like us.
Best known for her role as Harper Finkle (aka Selena Gomez's best friend) on Wizards of Waverly Place, Jennifer Stone pivoted from acting to become a nurse.
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In 2020, she announced on Instagram that she had graduated from nursing school, and after completing volunteering experience, joined Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center as a registered nurse.
Her announcement came at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic where she joined many medical professionals on the frontlines helping those impacted by the virus.
"It had been a big milestone for me to get this particular job in the ER at Providence just because that was where I started my nursing journey as a volunteer,” Stone told Teen Vogue in a 2020 interview. "Plus, I'm so honored to be learning from and working with these nurses, and helping in any way that I can, especially during this time."
Nowadays, Stone still balances nursing along with hosting a Wizards of Waverly Place rewatch podcast with her co-star David DeLuise, Wizards of Waverly Pod.
Perhaps the Disney Channel star with the wildest career trajectory, Bridgit Mendler went from starring on Good Luck Charlie to becoming an MIT graduate with her own space startup.
Starring in a slew of Disney Channel flicks like Lemonade Mouth, Wizards of Waverly Place, and most notably, Good Luck Charlie, Mendler went on to balance a career in music and acting while pursuing higher education.
She graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a graduate degree in 2020, and four years later, announced that she would be serving as the CEO of her own startup, Northwood Space.
"At Northwood Space we have our sights on building a data highway between earth and space," Mendler wrote on Twitter earlier this year. "We are designing shared ground infrastructure from first principles to expand access to space. We have a lot of work ahead of us but that's the fun part. If you like building quickly and seeing your work deployed in locations around the globe with real impact, we want you at Northwood."
While Tiffany Thornton found fame starring alongside Demi Lovato on Sonny With A Chance, she pivoted from acting after the show's end and briefly worked as a morning radio show host in 2016.
After her first husband passed away in 2015, Thornton remarried two years later and moved to Arkansas where she worked as a recruiter at Champion Christian College.
She is now a mom to four children.
Starring in Disney Channel classics like Read It and Weep and Phil of the Future, Kay Panabaker has gone on to work as a zookeeper at Disney World after retiring from acting.
In a 2016 interview with Naperville Magazine, Panabaker reflected on her decision to stop acting, telling the outlet, "My discontentment started several years later on another TV show I was on. By contrast, it wasn't a good experience. The cast didn't seem to love it. The producers didn't seem into it. The crew was constantly changing.
"The kicker for me was when a producer told me that they were going to be bringing on a love interest for me, and that I needed to lose weight because of that," she continued. "I was barely a hundred pounds. I didn’t think this was a good reason for a character to lose weight. It’s not like my character was going to catch a life-threatening disease or anything. I was 21 at the time the show ended. I spent a couple years after that in LA, still auditioning, but the passion wasn’t there."
Widely known for playing Gordo on Lizzie McGuire alongside Hilary Duff, Adam Lamberg worked as a development officer at New York's Irish Arts Centre following his acting career.
He briefly returned to acting for a reboot of Lizzie McGuire, and even filmed some scenes before the show was ultimately scrapped by Disney. Per his LinkedIn page, he now works as a freelancer in special events coordinating and fundraising.