Joan Cusack Details Life as 'Normal Person' After Moving Away From Hollywood

Joan Cusack has particular reasons for stepping back into the limelight in recent years.

"I think because I've worked for a long time, and I feel so honored to be able to work in this industry," Cusack, 63, told Varietyat the Tuesday, June 9, premiere of Toy Story 5. "But it's also great to live your life and raise your kids and be in Chicago and be a normal person. It's, kind of, priceless."

Cusack, who returns to the spotlight as the voice of Jessie in Toy Story 5, lived in Chicago well before finding success as an actress.

"My dad's job brought [my parents] to Chicago for a couple of years, which they thought was a pretty good place to raise a family. They were first-generation Chicagoans," Cusack previously told The Guardianin 2011. "I still live in Chicago, as does my mom. It is unusual for an actress to live there, but it is where I grew up and my parents were right, it is a good place to raise kids."

Cusack has been married to attorney Richard Burke, with whom she shares two sons, since 1999.

"I want [my kids] to see that I have things I feel passionate about because it is such a great feeling to really love something," the actress recalled to The Guardian at the time. "My parents had five kids and we are all close. We were a traditional family."

She continued, "My mom didn't have a job, she was just raising kids. My dad went out to work. He was a really funny man, very silly. He loved comedy. We would watch Mel Brooks movies and Monty Python and he would always find some humor in everything. He made home movies of us, and he would show them in the backyard. He was great fun."

As for Cusack, she travels back and forth from her acting jobs to her family in Illinois. She also opened a lifestyle store, Judy Maxwell Home, in the Windy City in 2011.

"My kids were young, and I didn't really want to take acting work, because I always had to go away," she told the New Yorkerin 2019. "I was trying to think of something to do, because I'm not really a big cooking person. … I also think, if you're a woman now, it's so fun to have a shop of your own. You hone your instincts in the world, versus at home. This is a little lab of my own instincts about being in the world."

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This story was originally published June 10, 2026 at 11:54 AM.