In the early 1990s, the world fell in love with the charming Mara Wilson, the child actress famed for playing the clever little girl in family classics like Mrs. Doubtfire and Miracle the 34th Street.
The young star, who turned 37 on July 24, appeared to be on track for success, but as she grew older, she stopped being “cute” and disappeared from the big screen.
“Hollywood was burned out on me,” she says. She continues, “if you’re not cute anymore, if you’re not beautiful, then you are worthless.”
Keep reading to find out what happened to Wilson.
Mara Wilson, five, won the hearts of millions of people when she played Robin Williams’ youngest kid in Mrs. Doubtfire in 1993.
The California native had previously starred in commercials before being offered a role in one of Hollywood’s highest-grossing comedies in 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 actor. You’re just a kid,’” Wilson, now 37, said.
Following her big-screen debut, she landed the role of Susan Walker, which Natalie Wood performed in 1947, in 1994’s Miracle on 34th Street.
The siblings from ‘MRS DOUBTFIRE’ have reunited over 30 years after the film’s release. pic.twitter.com/igfg92AlN9
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) May 2, 2024
In an essay for the Guardian, Wilson describes her audition: “I read my lines for the production team and told them I didn’t believe in Santa Claus.” She continues, referring to the Oscar-winning actor who played her mother in Mrs. Doubtfire, “but I did believe in the tooth fairy and had named mine after Sally Field.”
‘Most unhappy’
Wilson then starred as the magical girl in 1996’s Matilda, with Danny DeVito and his real-life wife Rhea Perlman.
It was also the year her mother, Suzie, lost her struggle against breast ᴄᴀɴᴄᴇʀ.
“I didn’t really know who I was…There was who I was before that, and who I was after that. She was like this 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 ᴅɪᴇᴅ.”
The young girl was tired, and when she was “very famous,” she says she “was the most unhappy.”
When she was 11, she reluctantly played her final significant role in the 2000 fantasy adventure picture Thomas and the Magic Railroad. “The characters were too young. At 11, I had a visceral reaction to [the] script…Ugh, I thought. How cute,” she tells The Guardian.
‘Burned out’
But her departure from Hollywood was not solely her decision.
Wilson, a young adolescent, was going through puberty and outgrowing the “cute.”
She’d been “just another weird, nerdy, loud girl with bad teeth and bad hair, whose bra strap was always showing.”
Backstage at @OkaytoSayTX supporting #mentalhealth awareness and destigmatization! pic.twitter.com/IqfFkuRiPj
— Mara Wilson (@MaraWilson) March 8, 2018
“At 13, no one had called me cute or mentioned the way I looked in years, at least not in a positive way,” she says.
Wilson was forced to deal with the pressures of celebrity and the difficulties of transitioning to adulthood in public. Her shifting image had a significant impact on her.
“I had this Hollywood idea that if you’re not cute anymore, if you’re not beautiful, then you are worthless. Because I directly tied that to the demise of my career. Even though I was sort of burned out on it, and Hollywood was burned out on me, it still doesn’t feel good to be rejected.”
Mara as the writer
Wilson, now a writer, wrote her debut novel, Where Am I Now? “True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame” was published in 2016.
The publication addresses “everything from what she learned about s3x on the set of Melrose Place, to discovering in adolescence that she was no longer ‘cute’ enough for Hollywood, these essays chart her journey from accidental fame to relative (but happy) obscurity.”
Having a rad time at #90sCon! pic.twitter.com/WMEEPpIBRr
— Mara Wilson (@MaraWilson) March 11, 2022
She also authored a biography called “Good Girls Don’t” about her life as a child performer trying to live up to expectations.
“Being cute just made me miserable,” she writes in her essay for the Guardian. “I had always thought it would be me giving up acting, not the other way around.”
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