Mara Wilson was a fixture in several films of the 1990s that are widely considered to be modern classics: in a span of three years, she appeared in Mrs. Doubtfire, Matilda, and Miracle on 34th Street. She was barely six when she was cast in her first role as Natalie Hillard in Mrs. Doubtfire, and in a new interview with The Guardian, she revealed that even though her experiences on the sets of her films were generally positive, being in the public eye caused her lasting damage and trauma.
“I don’t think you can be a child star without there being some kind of lasting damage,” Wilson told the outlet. “The thing that people assume is that Hollywood is inherently corrupt, and there’s something about being on film sets that destroys you.”
She continued, “For me, that was not necessarily true. I always felt safe on film sets…I worked with a lot of really wonderful directors, who were used to working with children.”
But, she said, the media was not as compassionate, and the internet was not a safe place for her: “I was still sexualized,” she said. “I had people sending me inappropriate letters and posting things about me online… I made the mistake of Googling myself when I was 12 and saw things that I couldn’t unsee.”
After appearing the the 1996 film Matilda, she said things were difficult because people conflated her with her character, something she didn’t know how to handle at such a young age.
“I saw that [fans] were disappointed that I wasn’t as smart, pretty, nice, as they expect you to be. I think they were expecting me to be Matilda, and she’s wonderful, but she’s not real,” Wilson explained. “She’s brilliant in every single way. She’s smart, and kind and powerful. Then they met me, this nerdy, awkward teenager who got angry sometimes, but couldn’t even channel her anger into powers. I was never going to live up to that.”
As she got older and she became less in-demand as an actor, she said she “had this Hollywood idea that if you’re not cute any more, if you’re not beautiful, then you are worthless… 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.”
Though she still works as an actor, Wilson has also become an advocate for child stars. In the past few years she has detailed her experiences in a 2016 book as well as in the HBO Max documentary Showbiz Kids. Wilson has a new book out now called Good Girls Don’t.