He was the richest kid in Hollywood with an illustrious career ahead of him, but Angus T. Jones quit acting at the height of his success to pursue a vastly different path.
The American actor, now 27, emerged for the first time in years in paparazzi images this week, sporting a thick beard and bare feet as he stepped out in Los Angeles.
It was a bewildering sight for those who for many years watched Jones play the adorable Jake Harper in the CBS sitcom Two And A Half Men, which he was cast in at the age of 10 back in 2003.
The comedy series swiftly gained a beloved following for its unlikely character dynamic, with Charlie Sheen playing freewheeling uncle Charlie Harper, who takes in his recently divorced and rigid brother Alan (Jon Cryer) and his son (Jones) at his Malibu mansion.
As the show’s popularity grew over the seasons, so too did the trio’s pay packets.
Jones became the highest paid child actor on television in 2010, aged just 17, when his new contract awarded him $10.6 million over the forthcoming two seasons.
This amounted to $410,000 per half-hour episode for an average of 22 episodes a season.
But it would only be another two years before Jones began to distance himself from the show that made him a household name – and a multi-millionaire.
In late 2012, Jones publicly revealed out of the blue that he had become a devout Christian, declaring he had been baptised and no longer wanted to appear on the show, dubbing it “filth” as he urged people not to watch it.
“Jake from Two And A Half Men means nothing,” he said in a YouTube video on the Forerunner Church account while discussing his religious awakening.
“He is a non-existent character. If you watch Two And A Half Men, please stop watching Two And A Half Men. I’m on Two and a Half Men and I don’t want to be on it.
“There’s no playing around when it comes to eternity. People will see us and be like, ‘I can be a Christian and be on a show like Two And A Half Men. You can’t. You cannot be a true God-fearing person and be on a television show like that. I know I can’t.”
In response to the controversy which was flooding headlines at the time, Sheen publicly backed Jones, hurling blame at the show’s creator Chuck Lorre for creating a “toxic environment” on-set.
“Obviously, not having been there for some time, the Angus T. Jones that I knew and still love is not the same guy I saw on YouTube yesterday,” Sheen told TMZ. “I dare anyone to spend 10 years in the laugh-track that is Chuck Lorre’s hive of oppression and not suffer some form of an emotional tsunami.
“Jones’ outburst isn’t an isolated incident but rather a symptom of the toxic environment surrounding the show.”
After weathering a firestorm as a result of Sheen’s highly publicised sacking from the series the year prior, CBS took action to protect its show, announcing in April 2013 that Jones was being downgraded to a recurring status for the show’s 11th season.
Ultimately he didn’t appear at all.
In 2014, Jones officially announced his departure from the show, stating he had been “a paid hypocrite” for the last few seasons.
“I wasn’t OK with it and I was still doing it,” Jones said in an interview with a TV station in Houston at the time.
“It was making light of topics in our world that are really problems for a lot of people.”
He did however return in a cameo for the series finale in season 12, which aired in February 2015, with Lorre revealing they’d put everything in the past.
“That’s all water under the bridge,” Lorre told Variety. “He apologised shortly after. We’re on good terms.”
He hasn’t appeared on-screen again since, apart from a brief feature in a web series called Horace And Pete in 2016.
After stepping out of the limelight, Jones attended the University of Colorado at Boulder in an environmental studies program.
In 2016, he got a job as the president of entertainment at Tonite, a multimedia company founded by P. Diddy’s son Justin Combs.
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“My pops was a rigger and started an equipment rental company so I grew up working with him on shows and festivals,” Jones told People in 2016 upon his appointment.
“I’m excited to get to go into the venues.”
He also admitted to the publication that “the door is definitely still open” to return to acting one day.
