Hallmark Stars Who Vanished From The Spotlight

Hallmark fans know very well that the network loves to use the same actors over and over again in their films, both in terms of creating ongoing franchises as well as having stars fill different roles. For some of these actors, Hallmark has become synonymous with their entire professional identity. But for every Lacey Chabert and Andrew Walker, you have others who have stopped making content for the Hallmark Channel altogether. These stars have left the acting world behind entirely — and some have even left social media, which is the mark of death for actors who rely on maintaining a very specific audience to land a role.

While some of the actors on this list appeared in only a couple of Hallmark films, many of them were big stars for the network. For example, Ryan Paevey graced many lists of Hallmark's hunkiest leading men before announcing his step back from acting. Regardless of their total number of Hallmark projects, every actor on our list has one thing in common — they have not just stopped appearing in guilty-pleasure Christmas rom-coms and PG-13 mysteries, but they've disappeared from our screens entirely. Will some of them be back in the acting business within a couple of years? It's too soon to tell, but let's take a look at some of the notable Hallmark stars who have completely vanished from the spotlight (at least for now).

While many Hallmark actors simply vanish from the spotlight with no word, Ryan Paevey's step back from Hollywood was well-announced. The star's last acting credit was the 2023 Hallmark movie, "Under the Christmas Sky," but it wasn't until the following year that he officially threw in the towel when it comes to acting. "I may take 2024 off from filming, unless the project is with friends. The last 8 months of life in this industry have left a pretty bitter taste in my mouth, and I need some time away from a world so full of fake friends and empty promises. I'm weary," Paevey posted in a since-deleted tweet in April 2024 (via EntertainmentNow).

A few months later, Paevey — who has appeared in well over a dozen Hallmark films — released a statement to Heavy confirming he was quitting acting, at least for the time being. He cited disillusionment with the industry as well as his mother's lung cancer diagnosis as key reasons. Paevey turned his focus to his company, Fortunate Wanderer, which sells handcrafted jewelry, and in December 2024 said he was doing great away from the spotlight. "I get asked sometimes if I miss it ... the way my life used to be. Not really, no. Hollywood paid pretty well, but it was pretty taxing on the heart, mind, and soul," he posted on Instagram. Paevey did, however, throw a bone to fans when he said he may one day return to film and television work.

Little is known about Crystal Bernard's life today, but perhaps that is by design. A 2024 Los Angeles Times eulogy for her sister, one-time "General Hospital" star Robyn Bernard, indicated that Crystal was at one point living in Glendale, California, with her father and sister. Since the Hallmark star has no online presence and has long retired from Hollywood, that's about all we have to go on. It is a far cry from Crystal's heyday, when she was an in-demand sitcom star and aspiring country singer.

Crystal is best known for the show "Wings," also starring Tim Daly and Steven Weber. The series ran for eight seasons on NBC, from 1990 to 1997, and Crystal appeared as airport lunch counter owner Helen Chapel-Hackett for the show 's entire run. During this time, Crystal also made a run at country music, releasing an album in 1996 (and a follow-up in 1999). She continued to act up until 2008, mostly in television films. That included two Hallmark Christmas movies, "Single Santa Seeks Mrs. Claus" and its sequel "Meet the Santas."

Crystal was a big enough star that multiple fan accounts can be found on social media, even today. She began in Hollywood in 1982 and had her first minor brush with fame when she appeared as K.C. Cunningham in Season 10 of "Happy Days." The actor also starred in the final four seasons of the oft-forgotten ABC show "It's a Living" before "Wings" made her a household name.

Wyatt Nash first came to the nation's attention as a contestant on Season 22 of "Survivor," where he went by his birth name of Matthew Elrod. Under his stage name, Nash has since accumulated a fair amount of acting credits, beginning with the television series "Hollywood Heights" in 2012. Nash has also had notable roles on "Riverdale," "GLOW," and "Dear White People," but many fans know him best from his work with Hallmark. Nash appeared in four Hallmark movies, including "Love Strikes Twice," "Like Cats and Dogs," and two "The Bridge" films.

Though Nash was booked and busy for a while, he has not had an acting role since leaving "Riverdale" in 2022, where he played Charles Smith, an FBI agent and the long-lost brother of Betty Cooper and Jughead Jones. He has hasn't even made an Instagram post since September 2023, so there is little indication of what the star is up to nowadays. A college graduate who at one point aspired to attend medical school, Nash also started off as a model — which means he has plenty of options for next steps, in entertainment and otherwise.

Marc Bendavid still credits himself as an actor (and writer and gardener), although he has not appeared on screen in years. The star has obviously been keeping himself busy, especially with the announcement of his debut novel "Jacarandas." But as far as Hollywood is concerned, Bendavid has basically vanished from the scene.

Bendavid's first screen credit was in 2007, with a role in "Late Fragment," and he worked steadily in the years that followed. These gigs were mostly TV movies that gained little traction — "Her Husband's Betrayal" and "Too Late to Say Goodbye," for example — and guest roles on television shows like "Nikita" and "The Listener." These led to recurring parts on other Canadian programs. Bendavid subsequently appeared in leading parts on Syfy's "Dark Matter" and the web series "How to Buy a Baby," but none of these projects had the same mass appeal as his work for Hallmark.

Bendavid's relationship with Hallmark began in 2015 when he was cast in the holiday film "Angel of Christmas." Two more Hallmark movies followed — "Summer in the City" and "A Rose for Christmas" — before the network handed Bendavid an even bigger opportunity, a series regular role on the popular series "Good Witch." The actor joined the Hallmark show in Season 5 and stayed on the program for the next three seasons, until its 2021 end. He has three roles the following year, then disappeared — to write his book and garden, presumably.

Patricia Richardson has not been seen on screen since 2023, after decades of consistently working in Hollywood. The star began her screen career in 1979, with a small guest arc on "The Doctors," but mainstream success did not come overnight. Richardson's 1980s roles were mostly minor, with the exception of three television series — "Double Trouble," "Eisenhower & Lutz," and "FM" — all of which were cancelled in their first season. Richardson broke her one-season streak with "Home Improvement," a key part of most older millennials' childhoods and easily her biggest project to date.

As matriarch Jill Taylor, Patricia Richardson grounded "Home Improvement" and ensured the male-dominated show had at least one strong female figure. "When I took the job, they said it wasn't meant to be the Tim Allen show. It was meant to be our show," Richardson told the Los Angeles Times. "I've always said, I don't want to play the thankless wife." The actor received four Primetime Emmy and two Golden Globe nominations for the role, but eventually turned down a massive $1 million-per-episode offer to return for a ninth season.

Richardson stayed busy after "Home Improvement," headlining Lifetime's "Strong Medicine" and appearing in several films. She also appeared in a bunch of TV movies, including Hallmark's "Snow Bride," "Chance at Romance," and "Smart Cookies." While she seems open to working, she told the Los Angeles Times in 2024 that "nobody gets hired in their 70s if they're female in this business."

While Scott Elrod was never a Hallmark staple, he was definitely on the network's radar for a while. He left a good enough impression after appearing in the 2009 TV movie "Uncorked," as Hallmark hired him a second time for a TV movie eight years later. That film, "Sun, Sand & Romance," was one of Elrod's final roles before he stepped away from Hollywood. His final credit was two years later in a 2019 movie called "Atone" that scored a horrific 3.3 rating on IMDb.

Elrod's screen career began in 2005, and one of his earliest credits included 14 episodes of the TV series "Men in Trees" and playing "The Boyfriend" in Paris Hilton's "Nothing in This World" music video. It was around then that he found himself looking for more stability than acting could offer, which led him to start an auto business. "I was on a TV show called 'Men in Trees.' I really thought that I hit my stride in the acting world. But then we had the writer's strike and the potential actor's strike ... and it was just like, okay, you don't control your own destiny," Elrod told Wearbizee.

Though the idea for Auto Concierge — which offers storage and maintenance services for rare, historic, or high-performance vehicles using a subscription-based model — originated in the aughts, Elrod juggled both his CEO duties and acting up until 2019. He is perhaps best known for playing Joe Clark in 60 episodes of the iconic soap opera "The Young and the Restless," between 2014 and 2015.

Dale Midkiff is another one-time Hallmark star who has basically stopped working in Hollywood. Considering how long Midkiff has been on the scene, it's especially surprising that the actor has not had a single role since 2020 (and had only a handful of small parts in the decade prior). Midkiff has not quite disappeared, though. You can still find him at fan conventions across the country, banking on his leading role as Louis Creed in the 1989 horror film "Pet Sematary."

"Pet Sematary" was Midkiff's seventh screen credit, but his career did not take off the way some expected it would after the film made a cultural dent. His next project, the television series "Dream Street," lasted only six episodes, and he followed that up with a string of forgettable TV movies. Still, Midkiff kept working throughout the '90s and beyond, and even had subsequent regular roles on the sci-fi series "Time Trax" and later, "The Magnificent Seven."

More than anything, though, television movies have been Midkiff's bread and butter. His first one for Hallmark was 2003's "Love Comes Softly" — a huge get because it led to a series of sequels including "Love's Enduring Promise," "Love's Long Journey," and three others. "The truth is, Hallmark didn't want me. They had someone else in mind — a country singer or something," Midkiff admitted to From the Desk. "But (director) Michael Landon Jr. had seen me in something and he was just vehement — he wanted me for the role."

Bobby Campo did not just leave Hollywood metaphorically, but the former Hallmark star actually left Hollywood in the physical sense as well. Debut Entertainment posted a biography for the star on Instagram in late 2023, outlining his new digs and interests. "While still active in the entertainment industry, in recent years Campo has been living on 300 remote acres in Georgia, studying regenerative agriculture practices and techniques," the agency wrote, while advertising the actor for convention appearances.

Though Debut Entertainment made it a point to note Campo was still actively acting, that does not actually seem to be the case. Since 2019, Campo has amassed only three screen credits — one of which credits him as "Man" and another that credits him as "Naked Guy." The last of these credits was a Lifetime movie called "Vanished: Searching for My Sister," which aired in 2022 and did not feature Campo in a main role. Clearly, Campo has vanished alongside this mysterious sister, but he worked steadily for years between his 2005 debut in the TV movie "Vampire Bats" and 2022.

Many of Campo's credits are tiny guest roles on shows such as "Greek," "Justified," and "CSI: Miami," but he has had a few higher-profile parts. These include a six-episode arc on "Being Human," a recurring role in the first season of "Scream: The TV Series," and a handful of Hallmark holiday flicks. This includes "Love's Christmas Journey" in 2011, "Snow Bride in 2013," "Sharing Christmas" in 2017, and two others.

Ask anyone who came of age in the 1990s and they will tell you that, once upon a time, Josie Bissett was a big deal. The gorgeous star began her career as a model when she was only 12 years old, and moved to Hollywood at 17 (after a stint in Japan). Her first IMDb credit is from 1989, but it was 1992 that was Bissett's breakout year. That is when the cultural dynamo "Melrose Place" started, turning Bissett and her co-stars into household names. Bissett remained on the popular nighttime soap opera for 172 episodes, appearing in all seasons except the sixth (she returned for the final seventh season). While the cast of "Melrose Place" has changed a lot since 1992, Bissett looks shockingly similar decades later. Her career, however, does not.

Since 2021, the Seattle-based Bissett has only appeared in a single television episode, but her total disappearance from the screen has been rather surprising. Despite moving to Washington in 2002, Bissett continued working throughout the aughts, most visibly as a recurring character in 90 episodes of "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" and in a slew of made-for-TV thrillers. Bissett's work with Hallmark has been especially noteworthy, particularly her role in 2016's "The Wedding March" and its five sequels. Additionally, Bissett has guested in four episodes of the Hallmark series "When Calls the Heart" and starred in two other Christmas films for the network — "Christmas with Tucker" in 2013 and "Paper Angels" in 2014.

Kellie Martin is another name that will likely be recognizable to Gen X and older millennials, but to fewer people under age 40. Martin started on screen in 1982, but broke out in 1989 as part of the ensemble for the drama series "Life Goes On." Her career dwindled for a handful of years after the show's end in 1993 — with a failed sitcom attempt on "Christy" in 1994 and 1995 — but Martin had a major resurgence in 1998 when she scored a series regular role on "ER." Her character was written off the series only two years later, which is shortly before the actor graduated from Yale University with a degree in art history.

In the years following Yale, Martin appeared mostly in TV movies with names like "Live Once, Die Twice" and "Lethal Obsession." She then transitioned to Hallmark, where her films have had far fewer menacing titles (think "Christmas in Montana" and "Hello, It's Me"). Martin appeared in 14 movies for the network between 2012 and 2019, including nine in the "Hailey Dean Mysteries" series, where she appeared as the title character. Though she is not one of those child stars who ditched Hollywood for a "normal" job, Martin has clearly given up on Hollywood. She's had only one role since 2022 (the TV movie "An Amish Sin") and since her online toy store Romp no longer has an active website, there is not a lot of intel on what the star is doing today for work.

Rounding out our list is Ryan Bittle, a one-time Hallmark leading man so hot he made many fans sweat. Bittle has not appeared in any Hallmark fare since 2015 and, in fact, has not appeared in anything at all since 2022. Even before that, the writing was on the wall for the handsome star. The last decade has brought only a handful of roles, including two episodes of "Hawaii Five-0" and a Lifetime movie called "Marriage of Lies." For fans of the actor, it's a huge bummer to know that he has essentially vanished from the screen.

Bittle started his screen career with a role in the teen show "Sweet Valley High," back in 1994. He followed that up with guest spots on your usual suspects for young actors of that time period, appearing on "7th Heaven," "Boy Meets World," and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." The highlight was a six-episode stint on "Dawson's Creek," but Bittle was never able to land a juicy enough part to propel him to the next level. Most of his other credits are similar one-off guest spots on popular shows or bit parts in films, with the exception of 43 episodes of "All My Children" in 2013 and a handful of TV movies.

Bittle's first film for Hallmark, specifically, was 2010's "Backyard Wedding," starring one of the Hallmark Channel's favorite female actors, Alicia Witt. Bittle's other Hallmark credits include "Annie Claus is Coming to Town," "Operation Cupcake," and "Love by the Book."