Matilda's Mara Wilson Grew Up Before Your Eyes—But Where Is She Now?
A few weeks ago, Mara Wilson posed one of those urgent, niggling queries on Twitter: "Who is that actress that looks like Sarah Paulson but isn't?" Guesses from her 300,000 followers came thick and fast: Rebecca Hall? Patricia Heaton? Elizabeth Perkins?
In the end, though, Wilson solved it herself. "It was driving me crazy!" she tells me over the phone. "It was Maria Dizzia, who was on Orange Is the New Black," she explains, practically radiating the triumphant relief that comes from nailing that elusive fact.
Celebrity conundrums aside, it's hard to imagine anyone not being able to place Wilson. Now 29, the former child star grew up before our eyes, starring in Mrs. Doubtfire when she was five, Miracle on 34th Street at age six, and Matilda at the ripe age of seven. Even though two decades have passed since these beloved films first graced the silver screen, she still gets recognized regularly, no surprise given those fine brown bangs still frame a delicate and porcelain-pale face, a visage at once familiar but strange in its now-maturity.
In her book of essays, Where Am I Now?, the "formerly famous" Wilson explores the legacy of her childhood fame. The title is, of course, a play on the avid, nostalgic interest we have in celebrities who have taken leave of Hollywood. "I've always said that actors in America, especially child actors, are kind of the closest things that Americans have to royalty," she says of that heightened regard. "I used to feel worried when I would get recognized by people, but now I'm considering it an honor."
Being simply "worried" about getting recognized constitutes a restrained response, given how people treated Wilson once she'd attained her fame. Most seventh graders don't find out they're listed on a foot fetish website, for example-or come across nasty rumors that they're dead. And most of us endure the indignities of puberty on relatively (and blessedly) delimited stages, but Wilson happened to be in full public view for hers, filming Thomas and the Magic Railroad. When she hit her teens, Wilson's auditions began to yield fewer and fewer callbacks-one critic called her "odd-looking"-and she decided to take a break from acting that ended up being permanent.
Coming of age so publicly was a highly specific and relentless kind of gauntlet. For one, being in Hollywood meant constant scrutiny of her appearance. "I was very critical of my own looks for a very long time," she says. "I feel much freer now that I am no longer actively working in an industry that needs me to look a certain way." Often, fans seemed unable to differentiate between Matilda and Mara, and as a consequence, she found respite in people who didn't know much about her fame. Wilson's first serious boyfriend, for instance, had never seen Matilda: "I felt like he loved me for who I was," she says of the welcome contrast, "for being the smart, funny girl in his essay-writing class."
I feel much freer now that I am no longer actively working in an industry that needs me to look a certain way.
And writing is how Wilson flexes her creative muscles these days: Of course, there's the book and her addictive tweets, but also plays, and pieces for websites like McSweeney's and Reductress. Storytelling, a form which has found a new groove in the podcast era, also comes naturally to the chatty and articulate Wilson: "I was a very auditory kid; I think that I listened and also eavesdropped a lot." Since 2013, she has hosted a regular oral storytelling night about dealing with phobias and anxieties called "What Are You Afraid Of?"
At one recent installment, Wilson asked a plucky audience member to take a deep breath. He obliged, only to be told his cartoonishly exaggerated lifted-shoulder technique was all wrong. With patient but evangelical zeal, the petite host turned back to the audience and demonstrated how to do it in the most physiologically beneficial way-by breathing into, and expanding, the belly instead.
Breathing lessons? They might seem out of place at a storytelling event, but the exercise has a basis in Wilson's own experience with anxiety, panic attacks, and OCD, which she discusses extensively in Where Am I Now? "These are experiences that a lot of people think about but they don't really talk about," she says. "These things are at the core of who I am, and I wanted to present who I was in an honest way."
That, when all is said and done, is Wilson's modus operandi for now. Having farewelled Hollywood and stepped into a new way of excavating human feeling and drama, she's actually pretty sure of where she's at. "Here I am," she writes, "telling my stories to anyone who will listen."
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