Robert Davi spent decades playing Hollywood’s toughest bad guys.
But the real villains turned out to be running the state he called home.
And Robert Davi just let slip the one horror that finally sent him packing for good.
The Queens kid who stuck it out in Los Angeles for 45 years
Davi grew up in a tight-knit Italian family in Queens, New York, and landed in Los Angeles in 1977 as his screen career took off.
Audiences know the 75-year-old from The Goonies, Die Hard, and his turn as a James Bond villain in License to Kill. He also sings, and he built a second career performing the music of his idol, Frank Sinatra.
He never figured he’d leave. Davi has blasted California’s political leadership for years, and he has said Hollywood blacklisted him over his support for President Donald Trump. He stayed anyway.
Then he sold the house. January 2027 will mark four years since Davi and his family traded California for Florida.
In an interview Fox News Digital published in September 2026, he ran through the list.
“The overwhelming influx of homelessness in all communities, the political corruption and the waste of money by the local education agencies in Los Angeles that’s not used for students but for administration costs, and most of that goes to the political party of their choice, and the mismanagement of the LA fires were all [contributing] factors,” Davi told the outlet.
And he described what a simple errand turned into.
“When I first came to LA, I could go to CVS and it was fine. I could go to a store. It was fine. Now they have gates, they have guards and items are behind lock and key because of the rampant crime,” Davi said.
The killing in Beverly Hills that ended the debate
Plenty of Californians grumble about locked-up toothpaste and still stay put. The weather is hard to quit.
But on December 1, 2021, an intruder broke into a Beverly Hills home and killed 81-year-old Jacqueline Avant, the wife of Grammy-winning music executive Clarence Avant.
Her daughter, Nicole Avant, served as US ambassador to the Bahamas and married Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos. Money, connections, and a Beverly Hills address protected nobody that night.
Davi moved in those circles. He was close to the late producer Quincy Jones, and Jones was close to Clarence Avant.
“Why did I leave California? It was knowing this and watching this happen. It was the nail in my coffin,” Davi said. “California was seeping into this s***, the crime that was happening within communities and continually encroaching into communities … a home invasion and murder by a criminal that was let go three different times?”
Court records back up the heart of his complaint. CBS News and Variety reported that the man who pleaded guilty to the murder had prior robbery convictions and that the state paroled him in September 2021, roughly three months before the shooting. A judge sentenced him in April 2022 to 190 years to life.
So the system got around to locking him up for good. It just waited until an 81-year-old philanthropist was dead.
California voters already told Gavin Newsom the same thing
Davi sounds like an outlier only if nobody checks the election returns.
In 2014, California voters passed Proposition 47, which turned thefts under $950 into misdemeanors. Shoplifters did the math faster than the politicians did, and the gates and guards Davi described followed.
A decade later, those same voters reversed course. Proposition 36, which stiffened penalties for repeat theft and drug crimes, passed in November 2024 with roughly 70% of the vote, according to results CalMatters and other outlets reported.
And that vote came over the objections of California Governor Gavin Newsom (D), who opposed the measure. Fox News Digital reached out to Newsom’s office about Davi’s comments.
Seven in ten voters in the bluest big state in America sided with the guy from The Goonies over their own Governor. That number says more than any celebrity interview could.
But a ballot measure can’t fix everything on Davi’s list. California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office counted about 187,000 homeless people in the state in January 2024, and the agency itself called such counts imperfect. Nobody passed a proposition that made the tents disappear.
The Hollywood that Davi remembers no longer exists
Davi keeps circling back to one question. How did California, and Hollywood in particular, get so left-wing?
He remembers when Ronald Reagan ran for President. Hollywood gave the actor-turned-politician a hard time, he said, but conservatives in the business didn’t whisper.
“The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) wasn’t afraid. Conservatives were not afraid to talk. Johnny Carson was fair,” Davi said.
“You had conservatives that were big stars that spoke out and you had liberals. Since that time, liberalism has taken on another form,” he added.
Davi played Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in the 2024 biopic Reagan, which returned to theaters in September 2026. There’s something a little sardonic about a Trump supporter playing a Soviet boss in a town where one political line now governs who works.
And Davi says that line still holds. On a podcast in January 2026, he said of the blacklist, “It’s still ongoing, but it might be lightening up, I think.”
Maybe it is lightening up. Or maybe the people enforcing it are simply running out of conservatives who haven’t already moved to Florida and Texas.
Because Davi has company. Fox News Digital has also covered Zachary Levi calling California a “failed state” after his move to Texas, and Kelsey Grammer saying he “may have” lost roles over his conservative views.
The pattern runs in one direction. Out-of-touch Hollywood elites lecture the country about compassion from behind their own gates, the policies they cheer turn loose repeat offenders, and the working actors, cops, and shop owners who can’t afford private security pay the bill.
Davi could afford to hang on, and he tried. He wanted to believe the crime and the dysfunction would turn around.
Sacramento never gave him a reason to keep believing. And judging by the moving trucks, he won’t be the last tough guy to decide the sunshine wasn’t worth it.
Sources:
Fox News Digital, “Actor Robert Davi swapped LA’s homelessness and crime for Florida skies,” September 28, 2026
Fox News Digital, “Robert Davi claims Hollywood blacklist persists over Trump support,” January 15, 2026
CBS News, “Man who killed Jacqueline Avant sentenced to 190 years to life in prison,” April 2022
Variety, “Jacqueline Avant’s Killer Sentenced to Life in Prison With a Minimum of 150 Years,” April 2022
CalMatters, “CA election result: Crime measure Prop. 36 passes overwhelmingly,” November 2024
California Legislative Analyst’s Office, January 2024 point-in-time homelessness count