Through the COVID-19 pandemic, tens of millions of Individuals packed up their belongings and moved some other place. Amongst them have been a number of celebrities. One notable vacation spot was Texas, a state not beforehand closely related to the glitz and glam life-style of the wealthy and well-known. The explanations actors, influencers, and billionaires selected the Lone Star State range, with some selecting the proudly conservative state for providing what California did not.

For businesspeople, the attract of Texas lies in its low tax burden and different advantages. Others have been interested in the state’s emphasis on private freedoms, which turned a scorching matter amid the pandemic’s restrictions. Different celebrities, however, used the pandemic as a possibility to maneuver nearer to their roots and households. In Dennis Quaid’s view, the motion had the potential to shake up Hollywood to its core.

“We need to make Texas the movie capital of the world. That is what Texas used to actually have — a fantastic movie incentive program and a fantastic movie crew base. About 9 or 10 years in the past, I made some nice motion pictures there and [I] love working there,” “The Mum or dad Entice” actor, a local of Houston, Texas, stated in a 2023 interview with Fox Information. An enormous variety of movies are already shot in locations apart from California as it’s. “It is cheaper,” he argued. Whether or not his imaginative and prescient will turn out to be a actuality stays to be seen, however there isn’t a doubt that loads of celebrities have moved out of Hollywood in favor of Texas.

Joe Rogan moved to the Lone Star State in 2020 after turning into dissatisfied with California’s strict COVID-19 restrictions. He needed to dwell someplace with a extra lax perspective towards the lethal virus. After some analysis, he realized Texas may simply be the place, so he took a visit along with his household to test it out in Might 2020. “I went to a restaurant with my youngsters, they usually have been like, ‘We do not have to put on a masks? … We will eat at a restaurant?'” he defined on “The Joe Rogan Expertise” in 2024.

Their expertise solely improved from there. “Then we went to the lake, and persons are enjoying music and leaping within the water, they usually have been like, ‘We need to dwell right here!'” he added. Rogan’s thoughts was made up. “That was it. Two months later, I lived right here,” he stated. He selected Austin as his new residence, buying a mansion value a whopping $14.4 million to function his household’s new haven and the headquarters of his widespread — and controversial — podcast.

The irony of Rogan selecting Texas’ most liberal metropolis to name residence wasn’t misplaced on us. In truth, most of the mates who adopted him to the Texas capital have been upset. “It’s not the ‘dwell music capital of America,’ it is three heroin addicts busking with guitars. There may be zero expertise right here in any capability,” comic Tim Dillon stated on the “Good For You Podcast with Whitney Cummings” in 2024.

Matthew McConaughey could have head-turning political aspirations, however his causes for relocating his household to Austin, Texas, in 2014 weren’t political like Joe Rogan’s. McConaughey’s motivations for leaving Los Angeles have been truly skilled, as unusual as that may sound. After being shot to stardom for his profitable roles in early ’00s rom-coms like “Easy methods to Lose a Man in 10 Days” and “The Marriage ceremony Planner,” McConaughey felt the typecast was hurting his probabilities of advancing in his profession. 

“I used to be so sturdy in that lane that something exterior of that lane, dramas and stuff that I needed to do, have been like, no, no, no, no, no McConaughey. Hollywood stated no, no, no, no, it is best to keep there, keep there,” he stated on the “Good Hassle” podcast in 2024. He wanted to take a break and begin rejecting roles. “I moved all the way down to the ranch in Texas,” he defined. “I went down there and I made a pact with my spouse [model and actress Camila Alves McConaughey] and stated, ‘I am not going again to work until I get supplied roles I need to do.'”

When McConaughey and Alves left Hollywood behind, they have been going residence in a means. For the “Mud” star, a proud Texan born and raised, that was a literal reality. For Alves, the tradition felt much like her upbringing in rural Brazil. “I found a variety of similarities when it comes to what households follow right here, particularly going to church on Sundays, and being very into the outside,” she instructed Fox Information. 

Elon Musk has no connection to Texas in any respect, however, like Joe Rogan, he grew uninterested in California’s insurance policies. The COVID-19 restrictions gave him the ultimate push to go away the Golden State behind and relocate to, sure, Austin in 2020. He did not go alone: He took his billion-dollar companies with him. He introduced he was transferring the Tesla headquarters to the Texas capital in 2021, after exhibiting discontent with the California restrictions that pressured Tesla to halt manufacturing.

In his view, the state’s insurance policies have been beginning to damage its financial system. “If a group is profitable for too lengthy, they have a tendency to get complacent,” Musk stated at a Wall Road Journal occasion in 2020, in response to The Verge. “California has been profitable for a very long time, and I feel they’re taking it with no consideration.” With no company or private earnings tax and low enterprise taxes basically, Texas prides itself on being a business-friendly state. In 2024, Musk introduced he would additionally transfer the X and SpaceX headquarters to Austin.

This time, Musk’s motives have been political quite than financial. He introduced his choice after Governor Gavin Newsom signed a regulation that stops academics from notifying households about college students’ gender identification modifications. “That is the ultimate straw,” he wrote on X. “Due to this regulation and the numerous others that preceded it, attacking each households and firms, SpaceX will now transfer its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas.”

James Marsden additionally jumped on the Texas bandwagon in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. In mid-2020, he determined his new hometown can be — you guessed it — Austin, a spot he had been aware of for at the least twenty years and nonetheless had mates in. With the shakeup brought on by the well being disaster, Marsden noticed a possibility to maneuver nearer to residence. “I grew up in Oklahoma, all my household remains to be there,” he stated on “Stay with Kelly and Ryan” in December 2020. “I am a lot nearer to my mother and everyone.”

Whereas proximity to his roots performed an enormous function, Marsden additionally appreciated Austin’s distinctive mixture of simplicity and cultural alternatives. “It nonetheless acquired that small-town really feel to it, but it surely’s undoubtedly booming in the mean time,” he stated. The “Westworld” star proved he did not remorse the transfer one bit when he bought a $1.84 million five-bedroom residence in January 2022. Regardless of being from the neighboring state, Marsden has roots in Texas.

In a March episode of Nationwide Geographic’s “No Style Like House With Antoni Porowski,” he traced his household’s historical past from Bavaria, Germany, by means of completely different elements of Texas. Possibly he felt an ancestral pull towards the Lone Star State. He clearly wasn’t the one celeb to really feel it, however he claims he began the development. “When there is a huge, essential choice to be made for Elon [Musk] and all the remainder of Hollywood, they sort of examine in to see what I am doing first,” he joked on “Stay.”

Like Matthew McConaughey, Glen Powell returned residence. In 2024, he moved again not solely to his residence state however to his hometown. The one Austinite on the record, the “Hit Man” actor was born within the Texas capital metropolis, the place he lived all the way in which as much as school. He was finding out radio-television-film on the College of Texas at Austin when he moved to Los Angeles to pursue appearing at age 19. Because of his appearing success, he can now transfer again. “[The benefit of] getting up to now in Hollywood is that I can now depart Hollywood,” he instructed The Hollywood Reporter in 2024. “It is like I’ve earned the power to return to my household.”

Moreover being near his household and roots, Powell needed to go away Hollywood’s celebrity-obsessed atmosphere behind. “The factor that makes me really feel in battle with some elements of this second is that I like selecting after I’m out in entrance,” he stated. The ubiquity of paparazzi and photographers basically takes a toll. “I feel you get sufficient of those who you simply need to carry your loved ones as shut as attainable — or run to them,” he defined.

Shifting again to Austin has one other perk: It permits him to commit extra time — and house — to a different of his passions. “My home in Austin, just about each sq. foot is designed round how one can maximize Texas football-watching events and school soccer recreation days,” the Texas Longhorns fan instructed Folks in April.