Everyone fell in love with the endearing Mara Wilson in the early 1990s. She was a child actor best recognized for her roles as the bright little girl in well-known family films like Miracle on 34th Street and Mrs. Doubtfire.
As the rising star—who turned 37 on July 24—grew older, she appeared ready for the big screen, but she finally lost her charm and vanished from view.
“You are worthless if you are no longer cute or beautiful,” she asserts. Hollywood was sick and tired of me.
To find out what happened to Wilson, continue reading!
When five-year-old Mara Wilson played Robin Williams’ youngest kid in Mrs. Doubtfire in 1993, millions of people fell in love.
When the Californian was approached to feature in one of the highest-grossing comedies in Hollywood history, she had already been in advertisements.
“My parents grounded me even though they were proud of me.” My mother would always tell me that I’m only an actor if I ever declared, “I’m the greatest!” Wilson, who is now 37 years old, remarked, “You’re just a kid.”
Following her big-screen premiere, she was cast as Susan Walker in Miracle on 34th Street (1994), reprising Natalie Wood’s 1947 role.
“I read my lines for the production team and told them I didn’t believe in Santa Claus,” Wilson wrote in her Guardian blog about her audition experience. She makes reference to the actress who won an Oscar for portraying her mother in Mrs. Doubtfire when she states, “But I did believe in the tooth fairy and had named mine after Sally Field.”
“Very disappointed”
Wilson later appeared in the 1996 film Matilda with Danny DeVito and his real-life wife, Rhea Perlman, as the magical girl.
Suzie, her mother, too lost her fight against breast cancer in that same year.
“I wasn’t really sure who I was.That was the distinction between my previous and current selves. Wilson states, “She was like this omnipresent thing in my life,” describing her deep grief following her mother’s death.”I found it kind of overwhelming,” she continues. Most of the time, especially after Mom died, all I wanted was to be a typical kid.
The young girl claims that she was “the most unhappy” and exhausted when she became “very famous.”
Reluctantly, she took on her final significant role at the age of eleven in the 2000 fantasy adventure movie Thomas and the Magic Railroad. Too young were the characters. I was viscerally affected by [the] writing at eleven.I was miserable. She says, “It’s amazing,” to the Guardian.
“Demolished”
Having said that, she wasn’t the only person to choose to leave Hollywood.
Wilson was a young adolescent going through puberty and evolving beyond the “cute” category, so he was not receiving opportunities.
“Just another weird, nerdy, loud girl with bad hair and teeth, whose bra strap was always showing,” was how she was described.
“When I was thirteen, no one had complimented my appearance or called me cute, at least not in a positive way.”
Wilson had to contend with the difficulties of growing up in the spotlight as well as the demands of celebrity. That had a big impact on how she saw herself changing.
“I had this Hollywood notion that you are worthless if you lost your sweetness or attractiveness. Because I connected that directly to my job’s destruction. Rejection still hurts, even if I was kind of burned out on rejection and Hollywood was burned out on me.
Mara in her role as author
Wilson authored her first novel, “Where Am I Now?” before she became a writer. “Ancidental Fame and True Tales of Childhood” was published in 2016.
The book covers everything from her experiences learning about sex on the Melrose Place set to her discovery as a teenager that she was no longer “cute” enough for Hollywood, as well as her path from inadvertent popularity to relative (but happy) obscurity.
She also penned the biography “Good Girls Don’t,” which describes her difficulties growing up as a performer and meeting expectations.
In her Guardian column, she adds, “Being cute just made me miserable.” I always intended to give up acting; I never thought I would.
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