AceShowbiz - Michelle Pfeiffer was taken aback by claims she had retired from acting when she was just trying to raise a family.

"The First Lady" actress has reflected on her decision to take a break from Hollywood for around five years after the attention on her and her family made things difficult for her kids Claudia, now 29, and John, 27, when they were growing up.

Recalling her decision to protect her children, she told The Hollywood Reporter, "[It was] 'Well, I'll only shoot in the summer, and I'll only shoot here, and I'll only blah, blah, blah, blah,' and finally it was just too much trouble to hire me."

The 63-year-old star and her husband David E. Kelley moved their family away from Los Angeles, and after five years she was surprised by the way others saw her career.

She added, "I would start to hear that I had retired, and I'd be like, 'Wait, no.'"

Michelle - who has appeared in movies such as "Scarface", "Grease 2", "The Witches of Eastwick" and "Batman Returns" - admitted the move was down to the more challenging aspects of life in the spotlight, and it became even more of an issue with children.

She explained, "I just couldn't bear seeing photos of me picking them up in carpool for public consumption."

"And then they'd follow me home with them in the car, which was terrifying to me ... There were cameras right in their little faces, and it traumatized them."

Her children were too young to understand what was going on, with the concept of their mother's fame not a concept they could figure out.

A few years later, that changed when her daughter was in second or third grade, while they were still in LA.

She recalled, "My daughter came home from school one day, and she said, 'Mom, I know when someone's coming up to talk to me because they want to be my friend or because you're my mom.'"

"And I asked, 'How?' and she said, 'Well, if they're older and they talk to me for too long, it’s not because they want to be my friend.'"