When she starred in the cult television show Three’s Company, Joyce DeWitt, 74, became a household name. The actress worked about a decade in the business, but after the show was canceled, she decided to take a long break from Hollywood.

DeWitt is back working in the business after having starred in several television shows and films. And still, to this day, the 74-year-old looks just as amazing as decades ago!

So what made Joyce DeWitt leave Hollywood? And why did she and co-star Suzanne Somers not speak for 30 years? This is all you need to know about her – and her last meeting with Three’s Company co-star John Ritter before his passing.

On April 23, 1949, Joyce DeWitt was born in Wheeling, West Virginia. She was the second oldest of four to her parents, Paul and Norma DeWitt, and her childhood was split between West Virginia and Indiana.

Joyce DeWitt – early life

Performing was always something that was on Joyce’s mind. In fact, she knew before she started school that she wanted to perform.

“Growing up, I was a total movie-holic, but I always wanted to play the role that Clark Gable was playing or Spencer Tracy was playing. I was really never interested in the parts that women were playing,” she told Playbill. “I found the parts that guys were playing were so much more interesting.”

“[Performing] was never a hobby. I wasn’t even in school yet, and I knew what I was going to do. Of course, everybody just laughed at me. I knew very early on.”

Joyce DeWitt made her debut on stage when she was 13. It became her second home, and by that time, she had an enormous passion and love for performing. Joyce began taking acting lessons when she was attending Speedway Senior High School and later enrolled at Ball State University, from where she graduated in 1972. However, the up-and-coming actress was very intent on life in New York, where she wanted to work in theater.

Like many actors and actresses before her, “The Big Apple” was full of competition and could be a very rough place for some. That became clear for Joyce DeWitt, as she struggled once arriving in New York. She always wanted to work on Broadway, but she realized that it had to wait.

Instead, she did a summer-stock season in Chicago after finishing her undergraduate work and later moved to the west coast to enroll at UCLA for grad school.

Starred as Janet Woods in ‘Three’s Company’

DeWitt kept her focus on returning to New York City to pursue her dream of working on Broadway. However, life had other plans for her.

She finished her Master of Fine Arts at UCLA and was cast in Stop the World, I Want To Get Off. Finally, DeWitt was off, and it didn’t take long before her big breakthrough landed in front of her.

Not long after, Joyce DeWitt found herself in the casting room for the pilot of a new television comedy series named Three’s Company. At the time, she had no idea that it would become somewhat a cult series – and it was the beginning of a new life for DeWitt.

Starring as Janet Wood alongside John Ritter and Suzanne Somers, DeWitt became a television icon. She appeared in 171 episodes of the show between 1976 and 1984.

“It was such a gift. I mean, it was iconic. But who would have thought it?” Joyce DeWitt told The Spec. “All we were trying to do was make people laugh. When I think about it, the show was really an attempt to do a contemporary version of a 16th-century farce. It was about silliness running wild. I mean, we were talking about serious issues at times, but that was always somewhere underneath.”

“John Ritter used to say, ‘We don’t want people to just laugh but to fall over their couch laughing,’” she added. “The real issue was always the depth of friendship and the love those characters had for each other. That’s what drew people to them.”

Joyce DeWitt left Hollywood for 12 years after ‘Three’s Company’

In 1984, Three’s Company was canceled. The show won 1 Primetime Emmy and had turned the cast into big celebrities. However, when it was shut down, Joyce DeWitt wasn’t the one complaining.

In fact, after eight years on the show, she felt that it was the perfect moment to move on.

“It was time,” she said. “I was ready for quiet and reflection. I loved being Janet, but she was never my whole reason for getting up in the morning. My identity and self-worth weren’t wrapped up in her, and that show.”

“Of course, there’s a lonely period. I missed the characters as much as the people who played them,” she added. “But I’m basically a hermit. My natural instinct is to go into the cave and ponder, not stand outside and howl. ‘Oh, I have a gregarious side, but there’s the inner Joyce too.’”

Joyce DeWitt had only appeared in a couple of productions at that time, with Three’s Company being her main work for years. So one might think that since she was only at the beginning of her career as an actress, she’d be up for more work.

However, Joyce did the complete opposite. She didn’t enjoy being famous at all, and initially, the actress was only supposed to take some time off. But she disappeared for more than a decade, something she doesn’t regret at all.

“Regrets are a dangerous thing. I am very fortunate that in my life I have only twice regretted something, and that was 10 or 15 years later,” she told GayCalgary in 2009.

“I wasn’t sure I wanted to play it”

“If I had to do it over again, I couldn’t change it. I was going to take six months off just to chill out. I saw Hollywood and the way it behaved, and it was not a moral code that was natural to me. If this was the way the game was played, I wasn’t sure I wanted to play it. I took some time off and started meeting and studying with different spiritual teachers around the world. I thought it would be six months, not 12 years. “