The last time I saw Joan Cusack, 63, was in Shameless on Showtime. She was a standout as Sheila, Frank Gallagher’s (William H. Macy’s) girlfriend, in the first five seasons, which aired from 2011 to 2015. I also remember her amazing scene in Grosse Pointe Blank where she burned down the office after the lead assassin (played by her brother, John Cusack) has his identity compromised. I love that movie so much. Speaking of her brother, John gave a really obvious blind item on Twitter that Joan was paid about 1/7th the amount of William H. Macy on Shameless, which explains why she left before the end of the series. Given Emmy Rossum’s fight for equal pay on that show, this tracks.

Joan stars as cowgirl Jessie in Toy Story 5, out June 19th. She was on the red carpet for the premiere, which reminded us of how much we’ve missed her. It turns out that she has her own curio shop in Chicago, where she first moved while filming Shameless. I learned about it from this viral tweet. The details in the tweet are mostly accurate, but she’s been running the store since 2011, according to this profile in The New Yorker from 2019.

A young couple was browsing at Judy Maxwell Home, a gift shop on Chicago’s North Side, when they noticed a middle-aged, red-haired woman perched on a stool, palpating the sternum of a life-size red Power Ranger. The couple didn’t recognize her, but it was the store’s owner, the actress Joan Cusack. She had on a beige apron over a blue-flowered dress. On the back of the apron, she’d sewn a tiny vintage Barbie outfit.

“He’s kind of gone through some hard times,” Cusack said, addressing the shopping couple, as she pressed down on the Power Ranger’s chest. A strangled pleasantry emitted from a speaker inside him. “Very encouraging,” she said, stepping off the stool.

The couple left without buying anything, but Cusack considered the transaction a success. She seems concerned with more than just selling things: when she opened the shop, in 2011, she hadn’t yet put price tags on the merchandise.

“My kids were young, and I didn’t really want to take acting work, because I always had to go away,” she said. “I was trying to think of something to do, because I’m not really a big cooking person.” Raised outside Chicago, Cusack never felt drawn to Los Angeles. She was cast in the Showtime series “Shameless,” which was shot in Chicago, playing a randy agoraphobic named Sheila, and set up shop in Old Town. She’s moved the shop down the street since then, to what was formerly the Bijou, a gay-porn theatre. Her brother John rents the building’s second floor, using it as an art studio.

In the shop’s back room, Cusack took a seat beneath a crumbling portrait of a woman in a blue dress. “Virginia Woolf says you have to have a room of your own,” she said. “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.”

She gestured at the opposite wall, where an enormous, water-damaged painted backdrop of Venice hung behind a puppet theatre housing a vigorously loved Teddy bear and two miniature squirrels—one plastic and cute, one wrought iron and terrifying…

When patrons recognize her, Cusack enjoys being able to redirect their interest to something more tactile and, she feels, more personal, such as her hand-bound, hand-markered book about Tootsie Rolls. “Being a celebrity actress isn’t that fun, over and over,” she said. “It’s just not that great of a world, except for being exposed to cool sets and talented, interesting people. But this is so fun.”

[From The New Yorker]

As for the other claims in that tweet (that’s below), it’s true that Joan said it’s not that fun to be a celebrity, that’s based on her quote above, but she hasn’t really harped on it. I can’t find another interview where she’s said that. She’s also done other acting gigs in the interim as they mention.

The New Yorker piece goes on to say that she runs the shop with her friend Danny Roenna and that they “spend their days drinking cherry-flavored coffee and doing bits in loud mid-Atlantic accents.” That sounds ideal to me. I know I run a celebrity gossip blog and my job is cush, but I’m a little jealous of her. Joan Cusack lives the reverse Hallmark movie dream, the one so many of us would prefer. As a woman in my early 50s looking for my next chapter, I’m taking notes.

Joan Cusack has spent the last eleven years running a gift shop in Chicago. The red carpet she stepped onto this week for Toy Story 5 was a day pass to leave the shop and come back to Jessie for one afternoon.

The shop is called Judy Maxwell Home. She opened it in 2014 and named… https://t.co/bqX97YLAFU

— Eshan (@eshanbuilds) May 30, 2026

Photos credit: Lounis Tiar/Avalon, James Warren/Bang Showbiz/Avalon, Liam Daysh-Holmes/Avalon