Brady Bunch child star Susan Olsen reveals moment she knew she 'hated acting'

Susan Olsen opened about when she realized she 'hated acting' and wanted to step back from her career.

The Brady Bunch alum, who played the youngest Brady child Cindy on the hit sitcom for the full run of the show from 1969 to 1974, said she was 23 years old when she had the realization. 

The actress admitted she took the wrong career path in an interview with ReMIND Magazine that was published on Friday, her 65th birthday, as she reflected on her career in television. 

She said it was only later in her life when she realized she should have pursued filmmaking instead, expressed her regrets and opened up about her childhood dreams.

This comes after she claimed a 'woke' reboot of The Brady Bunch was axed over her conservative political views two years ago. 

Olsen went on to star in various Brady Bunch spinoffs in the years after the sitcom concluded before stepping away from acting to pursue alternative careers. 

She retreated from mainstream Hollywood as a teenager, went back to school and later worked as a graphic designer, a radio talk show host and an animal rescue advocate. 

'For reasons I can't even explain, I continue to do acting or to pursue it,' she told the publication earlier this year for the interview published on her birthday. 

The Daily Mail has reached out to Olsen's representatives for further comment but has yet to hear back.

'I think to please my mother, even when I was like 18,' she recalled. 'I had an opportunity when I was accepted at [the University of Southern California], even though my grades were not quite good enough.

'I do not know why I didn't go ahead and join the film school, because i must have known that I had an inkling for that. And now I know that's really where I belong, and it's just weird to me that I didn't know it [then].' 

After she landed an acting job and was on her way home with the script in her hand, she said that was the moment that it dawned on her and she said to herself, 'Oh my gosh, I hate acting. What am I doing? This is terrible.' 

Olsen said she completed the project, then decided to step away from acting.

'Of course I did the role, but I called my teacher,' she recalled. 

'I called my agent and said, "I can't do this." It wasn't my medium. And then immediately things started working out well for me as a graphic artist.' 

Olsen also revealed that she once dreamed of being a musician and becoming a rock star before she started acting. 

'I did more dreaming than practicing,' she admitted. 

'I think in my head I didn't even consider being a filmmaker because I knew I was going to horrify my mother by becoming a rock star.'

She added: 'I started out as a guitar player, but I really found that I was much more suited for bass.'

'This was before bass became the token female position in the band,' she continued. 'And you didn't see girls playing bass, but it felt so much more natural.'

She said she was in a band with her friend and said making music with them 'made sense.' 

'The only band I was really in, I was kind of best friends with the drummer so it just all made sense,' she admitted.

Though Olsen retreated from acting for a bit, she later returned for several television spinoffs of The Brady Bunch. 

In addition to starring in The Brady Brunch Hour, The Brady Girls Get Married and The Bradys, she also took part in the HGTV series A Very Brady Renovation in 2019. 

She also reunited with several of her costars from The Brady Bunch for the Lifetime Christmas movie, Blending Christmas, in 2021.