In the early 1990s, the world fell in love with the adorable Mara Wilson, who rose to fame as a child actress for playing the witty little girl in family classics such as Mrs. Doubtfire and Miracle on 34th Street. The young star, who turned 37 on July 24, seemed destined for success, but as she grew older, she stopped being “cute” and disappeared from the screen. “Hollywood was burned out on me,” she says, adding, “When you’re no longer cute, when you’re no longer beautiful, you’re worthless.” Read on to find out what happened to Wilson! In 1993, five-year-old Mara Wilson stole the hearts of millions of fans when she starred as Robin Williams’ youngest child in Mrs. Doubtfire. The California-born actress had previously appeared in commercials when she received the invitation to star in one of the highest-grossing comedies in Hollywood history. “My parents were proud, but they kept me grounded. If I ever said something like, ‘I’m the greatest!’ my mother would remind me, ‘You’re just an actress. You’re just a kid,’” said Wilson, now 37. After her big-screen debut, she landed the role of Susan Walker – the same role played by Natalie Wood in 1947 – in the 1994 film Miracle on 34th Street. In an essay for the Guardian, Wilson writes of her audition: “I read my lines to the production team and told them I didn’t believe in Santa Claus.” Referring to the Oscar-winning actor who played her mother in Mrs.
Doubtfire, she continues: “But I believed in the tooth fairy and had named mine after Sally Field.” Wilson next played the magical girl in 1996’s Matilda, opposite Danny DeVito and his real-life wife Rhea Perlman. It was also the same year that her mother, Suzie, lost her battle with breast cancer. “I really didn’t know who I was… There was who I was before, and who I was after. She was like an omnipresent thing in my life,” Wilson says of the deep grief she experienced after losing her mother. She adds, “I found it kind of overwhelming. Most of the time I just wanted to be a normal kid, especially after my mother died.” The young girl was exhausted, and when she was “very famous,” she says she was “at her most unhappy.” When she was 11, she reluctantly played her last major role in the 2000 fantasy adventure film Thomas and the Magic Train.
“The characters were too young. At 11, I had a visceral reaction to But her exit from Hollywood wasn’t just her decision. As a young teenager, the roles stopped coming for Wilson, who was just entering puberty and leaving the “cute” behind. She was “just another weird, nerdy, loud girl with bad teeth and bad hair whose bra strap was always showing.” “By 13, no one had called me cute or mentioned what I looked like in years, at least not in a positive way,” she says. Wilson was forced to deal with the pressures of fame and the challenges of transitioning to adulthood in the spotlight. Her changing image had a profound effect on her. “I had this Hollywood idea that if you’re no longer cute, if you’re no longer beautiful, you’re worthless. Because I directly linked that to the decline of my career. Even though I was kind of burned out by it, and Hollywood was burned out by me, it still doesn’t feel good to be rejected.”
Wilson, now a writer, published her first book, “Where Am I Now? True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame,” in 2016. The book covers “everything from what she learned about sex on the set of Melrose Place to discovering in adolescence that she was no longer ‘cute’ enough for Hollywood; these essays trace her journey from accidental fame to relative (but happy) obscurity.” She also wrote Good Girls Don’t, a memoir that explores her life as a child actress who had to live up to expectations. “Being cute just made me miserable,” she writes in her essay for the Guardian. “I’d always thought I was giving up acting, not the other way around.” What do you think of Mara Wilson? Let us know what you think and share this story so we can hear from others too!
