Chad Michael Murray explains why he almost quit acting after One Tree Hill: 'I just couldn't do it anymore'

To think, this holiday season we might have had a Chad Michael Murray-less The Merry Gentlemen on Netflix. And how merry could they possibly have been without him?

Murray recently revealed that he almost quit acting altogether following his success on The CW's teen drama One Tree Hill and that he had to take some time to "reassess" his priorities. In a profile in Interview, Murray recounted some of the crazier moments in his early rise to fame and how the pressure of coming of age in the public eye made him want to disappear.

"There was a moment where I was quitting. I was done. I just couldn’t do it anymore," Murray said. "It was right after I left One Tree Hill, and it wasn’t because of the fandom. It was because, when you’re 18 to 25, these formidable years where you’re really cutting your teeth on life experiences and your brain isn’t fully developed, you make mistakes. I mean, gosh, we still screw up when we’re grown-ups. But I think it’s hard for me to see past those moments when you’re not adult enough to understand the scenarios that you’re in."

The fandom, however, was pretty intense. Murray recalled one fan asking him to autograph her breasts only to come back a few hours later with his autograph permanently tattooed on her chest: "That’s on her body forever," he said.

The constant media scrutiny was difficult for Murray because "there are so many eyeballs on you.... And you go to the grocery store and someone points at you, 'Oh, that’s the guy that’s on the tabloid, or that’s the guy that did this.' Even if they’re not talking about that, sometimes your head goes to a negative place, and I know mine really did. And so I just made a big pivot at that point in my life and said, 'You know what? This is not what I want.'"

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Murray decided to focus on being a family man and recently moved his wife and three kids back to his hometown of Buffalo, N.Y.; meanwhile, his career is back on track with Netflix's male stripper Yule log-fest and the long-awaited sequel to Freaky Friday, which reunites Murray, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Netflix Christmas-movie queen Lindsay Lohan.

Let the Chad Michael Murray-ssance begin in earnest.