In the early 1990s, the world fell in love with the adorable Mara Wilson, the child actor known for playing the precocious little girl in family classics like Mrs. Doubtfire and Miracle on 34th Street.
The young star, who turned 37 on July 24, seemed poised 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, adding that “if you’re not cute anymore, if you’re not beautiful, then you are worthless.
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 star had previously appeared in commercials when she received the invitation to star in one of the biggest-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 actor. You’re just a kid,’” Wilson, now 37, said.
After her big screen debut, she won the role of Susan Walker – the same role played by Natalie Wood in 1947 – in 1994’s Miracle on 34th Street.
In an essay for the Guardian, Wilson writes of her audition, “I read my lines for the production team and told them I didn’t believe in Santa Claus.” Referencing the Oscar-winning actor who played her mom in Mrs. Doubtfire, she continues, “but I did believe in the tooth fairy and had named mine after Sally Field.”
‘Most unhappy’
Next, Wilson played the magical girl in 1996’s Matilda, starring alongside Danny DeVito and his real-life wife Rhea Perlman.
It was also the same year her mother, Suzie, lost her battle with breast cancer.
“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 died.”
The young girl was exhausted and when she was “very famous,” she says she “was the most unhappy.”
When she was 11, she begrudgingly played her last major role in the 2000 fantasy adventure film 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 exit from Hollywood wasn’t only her decision.
As a young teenager, the roles weren’t coming in for Wilson, who was going through puberty and outgrowing the “cute.”
She was “just another weird, nerdy, loud girl with bad teeth and bad hair, whose bra strap was always showing.”
“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 fame and the challenges of transitioning to adulthood in the public eye. Her changing image had a profound effect 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, authored her first book “Where Am I Now? True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame,” in 2016.
The book discusses “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 chart her journey from accidental fame to relative (but happy) obscurity.”
She also wrote “Good Girls Don’t” a memoir that examines her life as a child actor living 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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A woman hid several boxes in her attic from her husband for 40 years
For forty years, a woman kept multiple boxes hidden from her husband in the attic.
The wife eventually gave in to the man’s urging and allowed him to open the boxes one day, but when she discovered what was inside, she was horrified and started crying.
Kris Bresnan, an American woman, withheld a secret from her spouse for forty years. It was finally time for her husband to discover what was inside all the boxes that had been kept in the attic for so long.
The two decided to take a vacation away from the bustle of busy New York City after falling in love in 1975, which is truly when the narrative of the boxes began.
When Kris’s husband Bill handed her a napkin during the holidays, she told him it was the finest thing that had ever happened to him and that he loved her. At the end, he wrote the symbol for infinity. That day, they were laughing and playing.
Bill has developed the habit of surprising his wife on a daily basis with a letter, a love note, or postcards that convey his emotions for Kris, the most cherished person in his life. He surprised his wife every day for forty years.
Unaware that Bill had been giving him notes and letters for forty years, Kris preserved them all and stashed them in the attic in no fewer than twenty-five large boxes.
When the couple celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary, Kris told her husband the real reason she had forbidden him from going up to the attic to check inboxes.
He was unable to speak when he was told to look into the boxes. He had no idea that his wife would hide all those letters there and retain them for so long.
Unable to find the right way to express his gratitude for this amazing occurrence, the man broke down in tears and gave his wife a hug. That holiday, the two read aloud to each other the things Bill had said to Kris over the years in a private location. Meanwhile, they celebrated their 40th anniversary in style and relived priceless moments.
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