Ali Larter moved her family from Los Angeles to a small town in Idaho during the COVID-19 pandemic and never went back.
The Final Destination star - who has two young children with her comedian husband Hayes MacArthur - decided to leave Hollywood after the schools shut down and they relocated to a "ski town" her husband had visited as a child and Ali admits they had only planned to stay for two months.
She told The Hollywood Reporter: "[We moved] four and a half years ago. It’s wild how COVID opened up so many different lives for people in unexpected ways, where you really stared your life in the eye and went: 'Am I happy? What are the choices I’m making, am I willing to roll the dice?'
"It was the pandemic and our kids’ schools were shut down. It was a really challenging time. The kids were out of school for over a year and a half, and we decided to take them to a ski town.
"We went to a place I had never been to before that my husband had been as a child. We thought this was a chance for a couple months to just do something as a family."
Although they never intended to stay permanently, Ali reveals the huge change made a big difference to their way of life so they decided to stay.
She added: "My husband and I are both adventurous by nature. We don’t sit in the muck and that’s what it felt like - we were just sitting in the muck of this life that was not working.
"We went for two months and the schools were open there. We were able to put our daughter in kindergarten, and that was massive. We stayed for two more months and the dominoes kept falling in really positive ways so we just decided to roll the dice."
However, Ali admits it was a risk because of the couple's work was mostly based out of Los Angeles. She explained: "We had built our lives and our careers in this town [in Hollywood], and never even thought there was a world where we wouldn’t be living there.
"And it’s scary when you leave. You wonder if you’re ever going to work again, and if you’re giving it all up."
