Mrs. Doubtfire star Mara Wilson walked away from a promising career as one of Hollywood’s most recognizable child stars at age 13.
Wilson was only 6 years old when she made her big screen debut in Robin Williams’ 1993 comedy Mrs. Doubtfire and it wasn’t long before she was one of the most in-demand child actors in the industry. She followed up Mrs. Doubtfire by tugging at the world’s heartstrings in the remake of Miracle on 34th Street in 1994 and got her own star vehicle with 1997’s A Simple Wish, though the peak of her career was undoubtedly landing the title role in the 1996 classic Matilda.
“I think I had a good ear for dialogue from a young age — and I think that was probably because I spent a lot of time eavesdropping on my parents and my three older brothers,” she told NPR in 2016. “I loved to read from a young age, too, so because of that I could read my lines, which made things a lot easier.”
Wilson and her family went through a devastating ordeal when she was just 8 years old, as her mother, Suzie Wilson, died from breast cancer in 1996. Years later, Wilson explained that her mother’s death radically shifted her attitude towards acting.
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“Sometimes I wish I had stopped [acting] after Matilda because I think that that was really the peak for me,” she admitted to NPR in 2016. “There wasn’t really anywhere that I could go from there. So I think that I was already starting to age out of acting. … I think it would have been a good time to re-evaluate things. But I think that after my mother died, I felt like I had to keep going because film was the only constant in my life.”
Wilson recalled feeling “very depressed” and “very anxious” around the time of Matilda’s release because she was in deep mourning for her mother.
“I only have vague memories of the [Matilda] premiere, and it was really hard for me. So I think that I definitely became kind of disenchanted with acting, with Hollywood, while, at the same time, it was a crutch for me,” she said. “It was something where, when it was done, I didn’t know what to do with myself.”
The young actress continued landing significant movie and TV roles until she turned down an audition for the 2001 cult classic Donnie Darko. This choice to reject a major Hollywood movie role proved to be the catalyst for Wilson putting her career on pause at age 13 in order to focus on school. She attended California’s prestigious Idyllwild Arts Academy before graduating from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2009.
While 2000’s Thomas and the Magic Railroad remains Wilson’s last movie role to date, she took on some theater projects during her college years. Wilson wrote extensively about her experiences as a child star in essays and in a 2016 memoir before telling The Guardian in 2023 that she was still grappling with the complexities of childhood fame.
“I don’t think you can be a child star without there being some kind of lasting damage,” she argued. “The thing that people assume is that Hollywood is inherently corrupt, and there’s something about being on film sets that destroys you. For me, that was not necessarily true.”
Wilson countered that she “always felt safe on film sets,” though she did remember some “some sketchy, questionable things” that she experienced at far too young an age.
“Adults told dirty jokes, or sexually harassed people in front of me,” she clarified. “People who did things like ask me if it was OK if I worked overtime, instead of asking my parents, but I never felt unsafe. I think that’s because I worked with a lot of really wonderful directors, who were used to working with children.”
After graduating college, Wilson started taking TV roles once again — though exclusively as a voice actress for animated projects like BoJack Horseman and Big Hero 6: The Series. Away from screens, Wilson came out as bisexual — and has since referred to herself as both bisexual and queer — following the Pulse nightclub shooting that left 49 people dead and 53 wounded in Florida in 2016.
“I think that if you’re in a place of security and privilege — which I can admit that I am — it’s important for you to [come out],” she said in 2023. “I don’t see myself as anybody’s savior, but I’d rather it were me — who can afford therapy and afford this platform — getting harassed for being who I am than a young LGBTQ kid. I think it’s important.”
In 2015, Wilson took part in a video campaign for the charity Project UROK where she discussed her experiences with anxiety, depression and obsessive–compulsive disorder in hopes of encouraging more teenagers to seek help for mental health crises.
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“I wish somebody had told me that it’s OK to be anxious — that you don’t have to fight it, that in fact fighting it is this thing that makes it worse, that pushing it away is really what it is,” she told viewers at the time. “It’s the fear of fear.”
She then reminded teens, “You are not the only one who has this. Other people can and have fought these battles before. So the important thing to remember is that you are not alone, and you are OK.”
In her 2023 Guardian profile, Wilson admitted that she felt no strong desire to make a full acting comeback even though she’s begun to come to grips with her complicated childhood stardom.
“I don’t know if they really know what to do with a short, curvy, Jewish brunette. I don’t want anybody telling me, ‘You need to lose 30 pounds and get a nose job,’” she insisted. “I defined myself for so long by the media’s terms, by Hollywood’s terms, instead of defining myself by my own goals, my own relationships, my own life.”
