Mara Wilson is opening up about the way she was sexualized as a child star.
Mara, now 35, starred in an array of '90s cult classics before the age of 10, including Mrs. Doubtfire, Miracle On 34th Street, and A Simple Wish.
And perhaps most notably, Mara played the titular leading character in Matilda (1996) — a film that saw the then-nine-year-old nominated for multiple awards, including the YoungStar Award for Best Performance by a Young Actress in a Comedy Film, which she won.
But sadly, Mara’s worldwide fame came with several hardships.
In 2021, the actor penned an emotional op-ed for the New York Times, in which she recalled being sexualized at a young age.
“People had been asking me, ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ in interviews since I was 6,” she wrote. “Reporters asked me who I thought the sexiest actor was and about Hugh Grant's arrest for soliciting a prostitute.”
“Every time, I felt ashamed... My sexual harassment always came at the hands of the media and the public,” she added.
And now, Mara has opened up further about the tribulations that came with her child stardom.
Sitting down with the Guardian on May 15 for a raw conversation, Mara explained that while she personally “always felt safe” on film sets, she still witnessed several “sketchy” and “questionable” things around her.
“I don’t think you can be a child star without there being some kind of lasting damage,” she said.
“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. I always felt safe on film sets. There were definitely some sketchy, questionable things that happened at times,” she said.
“Adults that told dirty jokes, or sexually harassed people in front of me,” she explained. “People [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.”
Mara then explained that her mom, Suzie Wilson, who died just a few months before Matilda was released, was super protective of her on set.
“If she didn’t like the way that something was going, she would not hesitate to make her concerns known,” she said of her mom.
However, Mara noted that she was sadly “still sexualized” by the public — namely adult men per the Guardian. “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,” she said, with the reporter noting that photos of her face had been edited onto other girls’ bodies on porn sites, replicating child pornography.
What’s more, Mara explained that she was also asked inappropriate questions by the press — something that left her feeling uncomfortable.
“People don’t realize how much constantly talking to the press as a child weighs on you,” she said. The reporter added that when Mara was asked about topics like French kissing and who she deemed to be the “sexist” actor when she was just seven.
Perhaps as a result of her discomfort, and also because she’s a human who has bad days, Mara said she sometimes struggled to maintain a perfect public image.
“When you have fans, you can no longer be yourself when you’re out in public, and there were times that I was having a bad day, because I was an emotional teenager, or because my mother had just died,” she said.
“I saw that they were disappointed that I wasn’t as smart, pretty, nice, as they expect you to be,” she said, before going on to explain that she felt as though she lived in her character Matilda’s shadow.
“I think they were expecting me to be Matilda, and she’s wonderful, but she’s not real,” she said. “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.”
