Mara Wilson says, "I'm not surprised that many of us end up drinking and taking drugs"
The interpreter was one of the most iconic faces of the cinema of the nineties and at the age of 12, she left the interpretation. At 35, she has written a memoir where she evaluates her past to reconcile with her present.
Actress Mara Wilson was one of the best-known faces of the 1990s. For the children of the time, she was an icon. In a matter of four years, she appeared in three of the highest-grossing family films of that period: the first was Mrs. Doubtfire (Chris Columbus, 1993); the second, the Christmas movie Miracle in the City (Susan Walker, 1994), and the third, Matilda (Danny DeVito, 1996). It was this that gave him superstar status. Wilson was then nine years old. At 12 she retired from acting.
She is now 35 years old and she is not satisfied with appearing from time to time in those articles like "What happened to...?". Wilson traded acting for writing, and in her new book, Good Girls Don't, she delves into her past to reconcile herself to her present. In a recent in-depth interview with the British media The Guardian, she has spoken about being s- as a child, the early death of her mother when she achieved success, and the complexity of living in the shadow of her character: "I don't think you can be a star children without suffering damage”, he assures.
“A spoiled child does not do what he is told; child actors just do what they're told. Spoiled children are selfish and greedy; child actors often support their families. A spoiled child will never get very far in the entertainment industry, ”the actress begins by stating, before talking about how throughout her childhood she became an excessively complacent girl for fear that the people around her would reject her or leave her. sideways. Wilson must be a good girl. Wilson's problem is that as good a girl as she was, she wasn't Matilda.
“She noticed how people who knew me were disappointed that I wasn't as smart, funny, or personable as they expected me to be. I think they expected her to be Matilda, that she's wonderful, but she's not real”, the actress has confessed, “Matilda was brilliant in every way. Smart, kind, and powerful. Then they met me: a weird socially awkward girl who sometimes got angry... but couldn't channel that rage into superpowers." She also recounts that she noticed that she was never going to live up to her character and that she felt during her childhood and adolescence that she lived in her shadow: "It was like living with a fabulous older sister."
Wilson came to the performance by chance. The family lived in the city of Burbank, California, known as the "media capital of the world" since many entertainment companies (Warner Bros, Disney, or NBC Universal, for example) have their headquarters here, and many of their employees live there. Her father, without going any further, worked as an engineer at NBC.
According to the actress, it was common to see her friends from her school on different television programs, even though she was acting as an extra. Her older brother had been in a few ads and she wanted to do the same. "I didn't want to become a star, but to earn some money for college," the interpreter confesses. She did a few commercials, and then she auditioned for the movie Mrs. Doubtfire, opposite Robin Williams, and got the part. She was six years old, and she still keeps a scrapbook that her mother gave her at the end of filming so that she would keep a memory of an experience that no one in her family thought would happen again. Then came the Christmas movie and Matilda. And then she became famous.
Wilson also claims in the interview that she is fully aware of what she calls "the narrative." The story, which always ends up repeating itself, is about child stars who end up going off the rails and failing. “If you put that much pressure on someone, how do you expect them not to fail? If you let them know that you are watching their every move, they will rebel and try to form their own identity,” she says defensively.
In Wilson's case, her parents were farsighted and put all the money she earned into a fund for her future: “But there were a lot of kids whose parents didn't do that. Imagine having all that pressure and all that money... It doesn't surprise me that so many of us end up drinking, taking drugs, and partying." Wilson admits that although she "definitely" went through a "self-destructive" streak, hers was different: she hated herself, constantly telling herself that she was "a loser, a failure and an ugly one." At 12, in the throes of puberty, she had finally stopped being the Matilda girl... but Hollywood was no longer interested in her. In that period, she suffered depressive episodes and had serious anxiety problems and she lived obsessed with constantly comparing herself with other actresses who got the roles she also aspired to. She was constantly angry, felt rage, and lived in perpetual stress. It was at that moment that her father told her: "You know you can always stop, right?" And she took a break.
Today she continues to accept some sporadic papers, although they are usually as a doubler. What she found, after many searches, was peace. And also writing. She is not sure if she wants to get back in front of a camera: “I don't know if they would be clear about what to do with a short, Jewish, chubby girl. I don't want anyone telling me that I should lose weight or that I should have a nose job. I have long defined myself through others, through the media, and through the Hollywood industry, rather than by myself."
