Mara Wilson’s journey as a Hollywood star has been long and winding. She started out as a child actress, and rose to prominence thanks to her work as part of the cast of Mrs. Doubtfire in 1993.
The film was directed by Chris Columbus and starred Robin Williams in the lead role. It followed the story of a recently divorced actor, Daniel Hillard, who impersonates a female housekeeper to be closer to his children. Wilson featured as Natalie Hillard, Daniel’s 5-year-old and last-born daughter.
In 1994, she starred in her second and third movie roles respectively, in Miracle on 34th Street and A Time to Heal. The latter was a television film, produced and broadcast by NBC. Wilson’s first ever titular role came in 1996, when she played Matilda in the fantasy comedy film by Danny DeVito. The role started to cement her status as a bona fide Hollywood star.
In the few years that followed her memorable performance in Matilda, Wilson would go on to feature in a few other motion pictures. These included A Simple Wish, Balloon Firm and Thomas and the Magic Railroad.
She would later come to reveal the hard time she received on the set of that third film, which then turned out to be her final one in about a decade and a half.
Starting 2012, Wilson started making a slow return to Hollywood. But what had catalyzed her exit in the first place?
What Happened To Mara Wilson On The Set Of Thomas And The Magic Railroad?
Working on the set of Thomas and the Magic Railroad was supposed to have been an educational and fulfilling experience for Mara Wilson. Instead, it turned out to be a nightmare, and one of the most awful times she had in Hollywood. For a long time, Wilson kept those frustrations to herself, but she let it all out with a revealing interview with NPR in September 2016.
Like many other child actors, Wilson had to face the inevitable challenge of starting to grow up while still very much in the public eye. When she returned to set after a break from filming, she realized things were different thanks to the way her colleagues started looking at her.
“I came to set one day after a few months away, and people were kind of giving each other worried looks,” Wilson said. “And I had to have the director come and sit with me and explain to me that my body was changing… I was horrified, I felt embarrassed, I felt like I had done something wrong even though I hadn’t.”
Why Did Mara Wilson Quit Acting?
Mara Wilson’s negative experience on the set of Thomas and the Magic Railroad would have likely been a final catalyst for her decision to leave Hollywood. However, a look back at her career shows that the eventuality had been coming for a while.
On March 10, 1995, the Wilson family was hit by devastating news when Mara’s mother Suzie was diagnosed with breast cancer. This was right in the middle of the filming schedule for Matilda. A little over one year later, Suzie lost her battle with and succumbed to the illness.
Matilda was released nearly four months after the tragedy. The movie would catapult the budding Wilson to levels of success she had yet to experience, but the blow of losing her mother had already started a mental process that would see her walk away from acting.
Seeing her mother fight cancer and lose was not only a blow in her personal life, it also cost her a lot of the passion that she had for acting. Four years after Suzie’s passing, Mara starred in what would be her final role for a very long time.
Mara Wilson Has Also Struggled With Mental Health Issues
For most of her life, Mara Wilson has struggled with mental health issues. It is impossible to tell whether these were simply sparked by her mother’s demise or would have always existed anyway and Suzie’s passing only served to make them worse. What is without question is the impact that they have had on her life and career.
Wilson was diagnosed with ADHD before she even became a teenager, and has been managing the condition ever since. People who suffer from the illness are known to experience difficulty with attention, forgetfulness, impulsivity and hyperactivity.
In a 2015 interview with HuffPost, she also revealed that she often struggled with anxiety and explained how crippling that can be. “[My illness] would worry me because I didn’t think anybody else had [it],” said Wilson. “People would say they’d get a song stuck in their head and I would think, ‘Do you get scary thoughts stuck in your head, too?”
Personal loss, ensuing mental health challenges and the difficulty of being a child star pushed Wilson to quit her career. Decades later, she started acting again, and has mostly featured in web productions ever since.
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